


Whatever a Moon Has Always Meant

by EAU1636



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: A few nods to series 7 but no real spoilers, Angst, Episode: s06e02 Apollo, Episode: s06e04 Degüello, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Season/Series 06 Spoilers, Slow Burn, With and without the Morsestache
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23112358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EAU1636/pseuds/EAU1636
Summary: Morse and Joan set during season 6. Maybe they can’t have forever, but does it have to be all or nothing?Portions of Apollo and Deguello throughout this work, so spoiler warning for both of those.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday
Comments: 167
Kudos: 76





	1. Opposition

**Author's Note:**

> i carry your heart with me(i carry it in  
> my heart)i am never without it(anywhere  
> i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done  
> by only me is your doing,my darling)  
> i fear  
> no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want  
> no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)  
> and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant  
> and whatever a sun will always sing is you
> 
> here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
> (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
> and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
> higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
> and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
> 
> i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)  
> -e.e. cummings
> 
> Opposition- a configuration in which one celestial body is opposite another/ a hostile or contrary action or condition (Merriam-Webster)
> 
> *All this dialogue is directly from Apollo. It doesn't belong to me. I've just filled in the other bits.*

He doesn’t knock. Joan hears the office door opening and looks up. She feels that old, familiar pull as soon as she sees him. She tries to look friendly, but not eager, welcoming but not overly curious. Things have been so strained the few times she's run into him since that night. She smiles.

“Miss Thursday,” Morse says as he walks into the room. He’s nervous and trying hard not to show it. Only natural for him to come here and see an old friend for information about a case. It doesn’t have to be anything more. She doesn’t have to know how much he’s ached to see her. He glances around the unfamiliar office but it’s her his eyes are drawn to. She has a kind of confidence he hasn’t seen before, she looks very much at home here. This is what she’s chosen, over him, and the choice seems to suit her.

“Morse.” She’s caught off guard by how changed he seems. Last time she saw him he was in uniform. Today he’s wearing a dark suit, better fitted than his old ones. He looks sharp, not just better dressed, but edgier, and more on edge. He’s handsome as ever with the sleek suit and moustache, still, she can’t help feeling a pang of nostalgia for his old rumpled suits and disheveled curls. But she’d know those eyes anywhere, and she feels, as she always has, that he sees so much more than she means to show him.

“Jim Strange said he saw you at the magistrate’s with a Flora Humbolt. Criminal damage.” He’s practised what to say on the way over, afraid of losing his train of thought when he sees her, of saying too much, of being left unguarded in awkward silences.

“That’s right.” She’s surprised, unsure where this is going.

“What can you tell me about her?” He sits, trying to seem at ease. They are just friends, sharing information. No different than when he visits Miss Frazil to get the scoop on something. He wipes his sweaty palms on his trouser legs.

“Well, nothing.” She sits down at the desk. “You’re asking me to discuss a client.” He must know she can’t talk about this with him. She’s caught off guard by his directness, she feels almost as if she were under interrogation.

Morse looks around conspiratorially and lowers his voice to a whisper. “I’m looking to find out about her family situation.” Surely she knows him well enough to understand that he needs this information, that it’s important. She’ll understand that he’s only trying to do the right thing.

“There is such a thing as case confidentiality,” she says matter-of-factly. Just because he’s working on a case, she can’t ignore her own job. She can’t give him what he’s asking for, he must know that. She sees the flash in his eyes, sees his jaw tighten and set. She looks away.

“Right.” He feels the hurt rising up and tells himself it’s anger. He’s come to her, again, to ask for what he needs, and even this small request is too much for her to give. He feels like a fool, all his preparation for this encounter, all the assurances he’s given himself, only to end up stranded once again in the agony of silence after her refusal.

“So, what’s this?” He pantomimes looking around at the office without actually taking any of it in. He won’t let her see that she’s hurt him this time, that he was foolish enough to believe things might be different. “This your latest, um...”

“My latest what?” She asks, scarcely believing the sudden change in him. His face is a mask of disdain.

“Whatever it is, project, hobby, whatever you want to call it.” He can’t sit still, he wishes he could run from the room, wishes he could turn back the clock and never have come. His restless hand unconsciously moves to stroke his temple. She seems so self assured, so much as though she belongs here. He thinks of his own solitary desk in the storage area back at the station, of his tiny, comfortless room in a section house filled with men he feels completely alien from. Never before would he have believed he’d want to hurt her, but he does now.

“I call it working for the welfare department.” She’s taken aback by his vitriol. It’s so unlike him to be so volatile, so unfair.

“Ah.” He stands up. “And is that what your new look’s about as well, is it?” Her clothes are different, no more of the youthful dresses she used to wear while working at the bank. She looks steadier, stronger, no longer a girl needing to be saved. No longer needing him. “It’s very, um...”

“Very what?” She’s still more shocked than angry.

“Very Soviet milk yields are up this quarter, Comrade.”

“Don’t take the piss.” Now she’s annoyed, her defenses up. Is this really what it’s come to between them? Childish insults?

“No, it’s very, uh...” Now he’s started he can’t stop himself. All the hurt, the isolation, the humiliation, he feels it all coursing through his blood. “Dr. Zhivago. You look like the girl from Dr. Zhivago.”

“Julie Christie?” She tries to keep her voice measured. She won’t rise to the bait.

“No, the other one, the daughter with the ‘Then it’s a gift,’ the balalaika.” His voice has lost its heat now, grown distant and bitingly cold. He wants to get her blood up, wants to see he can break her calm.

“You know, you can be a real prick sometimes.” She’s furious now. How dare he come here and talk to her this way? She isn’t some little sister to be scolded and teased.

Joan barely registers Viv entering the office.

Morse lowers his voice, “Oh, nice language. Thank you, Emily Dickinson,” he says condescendingly, as though Joan’s the one who has been acting like a child.

She’s fed up, infuriated with him, with the way he hurls his cleverness at people like a weapon. He isn’t the only one who can take his work seriously, the only one who can make a difference. “Oh there we go again. I know you’re smart. We all know you’re smart. You don’t have to prove it all the time. Take a day off.”

“Well, thank you very much for your help." The words are an indictment. He asked her for the smallest of favors, he tells himself, for the greater good. No one seems to give a damn about making things right except him. He walks out of the office.

Joan tries to steady her hands, to seem unfazed. She takes a deep breath.

“Boyfriend?” asks Viv, a smile playing at her lips.

“Another one of dad’s,” she replies, the lie landing like a rock in her stomach. Morse was never just another one of dad’s. Never just another copper.

“Doesn’t look much like a copper,” Viv points out.

Joan shrugs. “No.” She glances at the empty doorway. Morse never did quite fit in anywhere. Her heart is still pounding, but she’s no longer angry. She feels as though all the air has been sucked out of the room. Here she is, finally getting her footing, finally doing something with her life, and he strolls in demanding information, acting like a petulant little boy. It’s all so unlike the Morse she’s known, the one person she could count on all those times when she could turn to no one else. She’d expected him to be happy for her, to see her as an equal now instead of the headlong girl she’d been, perpetually in need of rescuing from one foolish scrape or another.

She thinks of him standing on her doorstep in the grey light of early evening, the softness in his eyes, his hopeful smile. “I can’t do this anymore,” she’d said, meaning it in that moment, in her haste to finally begin the life she had chosen for herself. And were she to make the choice again? Well, it didn’t matter now. Whatever it had been, it wasn’t anymore, just as she’d said she wanted.

It’s all Morse can do not to run out of the building. Her words dig into him like barbs, echoing her father’s only a few hours earlier. What he wouldn’t give to take a day off from being himself, to be someone, anyone else for awhile. His intelligence is the only currency he has, the only thing that draws people to him and the thing that sets him apart, it’s his shield and his sword and his burden to bear. Without it they wouldn’t need him, without it he’d have no one, be nothing. But no matter how many cases he solves, he can never seem to prove himself, it’s never enough.

Now that he’s away from her he feels tears pricking his eyes. “I can’t do this anymore,” that’s what she’d said that night, and now he knows that what she meant was that her life would be better without him in it. It was the same with everyone, eventually, however much he tried to tell himself they cared, it would always end up this way. There was something broken inside him and the jagged edges cut off any ties he tried to make. He’s the one walking away this time but it doesn’t feel any different, he still feels left behind. He burrows his hands in his pockets and walks unseeingly, his anxious fingertips tapping out the familiar rhythm of loneliness, the discordant notes that echo down through the years like a lullaby of loss, the tune of things longed for that can never be.


	2. Occultation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate ending to Apollo. After the moon landing, Morse and Joan find themselves alone beneath the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Traveler, rememberer, sleeper,  
> tonight, as you slumber where the dead are, if the moon’s hands
> 
> should discover you through fire, lie down  
> and listen to her hold you, the moon who has been away
> 
> so long now, the lost moon with her silver lips  
> and whisper, her body half in winter,
> 
> half in wool. Look at her, look at her, that drifter.  
> And if no one, if nothing comes to know you, if no song
> 
> comes to prove it isn’t over, tell yourself, in the moon’s  
> arms, she is no one; tell yourself, as you lose
> 
> love, it is after, that you alone are the bearer  
> in that changed place, you alone who have woken, and have
> 
> opened, you alone who can so love  
> what you are now and the vanishing that carries it away
> 
> -Joseph Fasano
> 
> Occultation- the passage of one celestial body in front of another, thus hiding the other from view

Morse isn’t even sure why he’s come back here. There isn’t anywhere else to go, really. Soon he’ll have to decide where he’ll sleep tonight. He’s been alternating between the car and his desk in that desolate room for unwanted things back at the station. The section house is too grim to even consider. Better to be alone than to feel that kind of loneliness. He never really felt much attachment to any of his former flats, but he’d give anything to be back in one now, even back with Strange and his infernal trombone. He has nowhere now, and no one. At least here he can be out in the open and feel part of something, part of the world.

Christchurch Meadow is beautiful in the moonlight. There isn’t a sound, apart from the crickets’ song and the cool summer wind whispering in the trees. He sits down on the bench and stares up at the night sky. The waxing crescent moon is half in shadow, as though hiding a secret, but gives enough light to see the tall grasses swaying across the empty field.

The moon doesn’t actually give light, he knows, it only reflects it. And suddenly, he thinks of his mother, when he was a child, telling him about the light within him. Everyone had an inner light, she’d told him, the divine was within everyone, and he had only to quiet his mind to find it. Then it would light his way. But even as a boy he could never still his mind, it had always been wondering, worrying, wandering. He used to blame her sometimes, as though the name she had given him had branded him, formed his personality and his destiny. To spend his life endlessly pursuing, striving, never still or at rest. And later, he had blamed only himself. She’d been the only real light in his life, and all too soon that light had burned out. Names meant nothing after all. Nothing was constant, not even her. Love didn’t last, and left only darkness in its wake.

* * *

Joan had told herself she was coming here to get some fresh air. The walk would do her good. She’d felt so trapped at mum and dad’s earlier. The brisk, dark night seemed to call to her. But something in her had known she would find him here. Seeing him sitting there alone, looking up at the sky, makes something in her ache. She waits and watches him for a moment, not out of trepidation but a kind of reverence. She can only see his back, his hair blowing ever so slightly in the breeze, but she knows exactly how his face must look, she sees it often enough in her mind, however far away he might be.

She walks up to the bench. He turns, surprised, and then a half smile spreads across his face.

“Hello,” he says, tilting his head down a little.

She sits down beside him on the bench. They look up at the moon. “Looks close enough to touch tonight, doesn’t it?” she says.

“Yes,” he says with a sigh.

“Mad to think there’s people up there. Right now,” she says. “That someone looked up at the moon one night, just like this, and thought ‘Right. We’re going there.’ Not caring how impossible it seemed.”

“ _This was the prized, the desirable sight_...” he trails off. “Sorry. Being clever again. It’s always occupied the human imagination. Understandable, I suppose. But strange, all the same.”

“Strange?” she asks.

“That something so far away and seemingly out of reach could bear so great an influence on one’s life. Could be so longed for. Even when you can’t see it. It’s still there.”

He can’t help but glance at her, just for a moment. She meets his eyes. They both look away.

“Mum and dad used to take us to look at the night sky when we were kids,” she tells him, smiling. “Seeing Flora and Matthew tonight brought it back to me. Mum would pack blankets and cocoa and biscuits and we’d drive out to a field and sit under the stars. Night picnics we used to call them. Mum and dad would snuggle up together in a blanket while Sam and I picked stars to wish on. God, they seemed so happy back then. We were all so happy. And there it is, the same moon, unchanged.”

He keeps his eyes on the sky. “Changed tonight, maybe.”

“I don’t think it’s the moon that will be changed by them,” she says, “ I think they’ll be changed by it.”

She wonders what it will cost those men in space, this separation of more than miles, the price of experiencing something they would never be able to share with anyone else, that no one else could ever really understand.

“A thing like that, how could you come back the same?” she wonders aloud. “What must it feel like, just the two of them, surrounded by stars?”

“Magnificent desolation...” he replies.

They sit in silence, careful not to take their eyes off the sky.

“I suppose the whole world is looking up at the moon tonight,” she says. “Years from now we’ll all still remember. Where we were, who we were with, what we felt.”

Morse thinks of listening in the car to the moon landing. Of the whole world joined together, feeling a part of this momentous achievement by the human race. And all he had felt was an overwhelming sense of isolation. Those men on the moon, separated by a quarter of a million miles, were still connected to people here. While here on earth he felt completely adrift.

He thinks about how close her body is to his. The only other person in the world. It would be so easy to reach over and take her hand. He’s tried to tell her so many times now, in every way he can. But maybe on a night like this anything is possible.

Joan thinks of earlier that night, sitting on the couch and watching men land on the moon. Her parents like distant planets, a universe between them. There are worse things than being alone. She can’t let herself get swept up in the moment, in what she feels for him.

She could make it a night to remember. It would be so easy to reach over and touch him, to let herself have what she’s wanted for so long. But it wouldn’t just be tonight, not with him. She thinks of those small steps on the moon, of the footprints left behind for a million years.

She forces herself to smile and turns to him. “I’d better be getting home. The world will still be turning tomorrow and I’ve a feeling Viv will show little mercy to a sleepless assistant.”

At least he knows his part. He’s played it enough times now. He’ll see her safely home.

He smiles back, the smile she knows too well, the one that never reaches his eyes and always breaks her heart. “Let me drive you home.”

Riding in the car, neither speaks. The streetlights and darkened houses pass by unseen. The drive-in movie of memories plays in their heads, with its well worn soundtrack of _almost_ and _if only_.

He parks the car outside her flat.

“Goodnight, Miss Thursday.”

“Goodnight, Morse.”

Joan gets out of the car and walks toward her flat, refusing to let herself look back, not wanting to see the expression on his face. But it makes no difference, it isn’t the moon she sees as she lies awake in bed that night. She sees little Matthew Humbolt’s face as it looked when she’d left him, sees Morse’s face as she’d opened the car door, their eyes begging for what they dared not ask, as she’d turned and walked away.

Morse parks the car on a quiet street and curls up in the backseat. He wraps his arms around himself for warmth and imagines, just for a moment, they’re wrapped around her. He thinks of things too close to touch, and falls asleep alone, beneath the bright, distant moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small chunk of this dialogue belongs to Russell Lewis. I got it from a deleted scene mentioned in a Damian Barcroft interview. Link is below.
> 
> http://dmbarcroft.com/tag/endeavour-apollo/
> 
> The poem referenced in Morse’s quote (from Russ Lewis) is Moonrise by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
> 
> I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white and the walk of the morning:  
> The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the candle,  
> Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit, lovely in waning but lustreless,  
> Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, of dark Maenefa the mountain;  
> A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, entangled him, not quit utterly.  
> This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented so easily,  
> Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, eyelid and eyelid of slumber.
> 
> Are these idiots ever going to get together? We shall see...


	3. A Home in the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why must it be like this every time? The feelings so real and the timing so wrong. 
> 
> Set during series 6 with some portions of Deguello included.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So baby kiss me like a drug, like a respirator  
> And let me fall into the dream of the astronaut  
> Where I get lost in space that goes on forever  
> And you make all the rest just an afterthought  
> And I believe it’s you who can make it better  
> Though it’s not, no it’s not.
> 
> \- "It's Not" by Aimee Mann

Reports of a disturbance at Cranmer House, Jago had said. A fool’s errand, no doubt, only fitting they’d send him. Morse pulls up to the building and gets out of the car. 

He hears it first. Thunder, so loud the ground vibrates, though the sky overhead is cloudless. He looks up at the towering building as it trembles, rows and rows of flats reaching toward the sky. How many people are in there, right now? Adrenaline pounding through him, he radios for backup. All available units. But what will they be able to do, by the time they get here? What can he do, now? 

He runs towards the sound, towards the inevitable, the building’s beams screeching against the buckling weight. He runs into the tunnel, knowing that it’s already too late, knowing that he has to try. Midway through he hears a sickening crack, as though the world is splintering. And then the world explodes. He turns away, tries to cover his head with his hands. The sound is an assault, the tunnel black with dust, the blast pushing him to the ground. 

Nothingness. Then gradually he begins to take in the ringing silence. Clouds of dust so thick it's hard to see, hard to breathe. He needs to get up, needs to get to anyone, anything that might still be saved. He forces himself to stand and slowly makes his way along the tunnel, his ears throbbing, eyes burning, lungs gasping as if he's underwater. He stumbles out into the light and sees the building crumbling like no more than a piece of chalk. The floors, the lives within, cascade down, irrevocable as a waterfall. 

He runs towards the collapse, though the sky is falling, though he can't stop it. He nears the doors and sees the girl step out of the building, sees her sway like a dandelion in a gust of wind. He reaches out to catch her fall. Holding her limp body in his arms he looks up to see debris falling down like snow, blanketing the world in dreams turned to dust.

* * *

Joan’s sitting at her desk in the office when Viv walks in. She reads the bad news in Viv’s expression and unconsciously grips the edge of the desk, readying herself for the onslaught. 

“It’s Cranmer House,” Viv says, and though surely she’s seen it all by now, her voice quavers. “Something happened to the structure. It collapsed. They’re still searching the rubble looking for survivors, but the body count is already...” She shakes her head as if to rid it of the knowledge.

Joan’s heart beats faster, her stomach leaden with dread. “What can we do?”

“We’ll go and help sort out the survivors. We'll need to find somewhere to house them all. All those people. They've set up a makeshift morgue in the school gymnasium. It's going to be a long night.”

* * *

At the hospital Joan stands at bedsides, holding hands and listening to the stories of lives turned to rubble, offering what little comfort she can. She feels useless in the face of so much loss. Walking down the hall on her way to another visit, she sees Jim Strange approaching. He stops beside her and nods in greeting.

“Hello Joanie. You helping as well? Terrible thing,” he says, shaking his head, “Like a war zone.”

“It’s awful. Losing everything like that. I wish I could do something more.” She wraps her arms around herself, in need of whatever comfort she can find.

“We’re all doing what we can. You’re helping by just being here, giving them a shoulder to cry on or a hand to hold. That makes more of a difference than you know.”

“Do they know yet what might have caused it?”

“Early days still. We’ll know soon, I expect. Never seen anything like it. I can’t imagine what it was like to see it coming down. We didn’t get there until after. Morse was the only one there when it collapsed. Just like him to be on the spot.”

It would be him, Joan thinks, feeling her heart drop to the pit of her stomach.

“Is he alright?” She knows he must be, or Jim would have said otherwise, but she needs to hear him say it anyway.

“You know Morse, endlessly battered but never beaten. He was holding that little Sandra Reynolds when we got there. Covered in dust and debris and refusing to let the medics look him over before he headed back in to try to help with search and rescue. Wouldn’t even stop by the section house to get cleaned up before heading to interview victims. Last time I saw him he was still at it, looking like a bedraggled chimney sweep, but it’s no use arguing with him,” he gives a small sigh and shrugs, “Well, I’d best be off. Few more things to get wrapped up before we call it a night. Mind how you go, Joanie, you head home soon and get some rest, no sense running yourself ragged.”

She smiles, thinking how like her father he sounds, and gives him a friendly squeeze on the shoulder before he continues down the hall. 

She walks slowly on, her mind far from the hospital for a moment. She can’t help imagining what it must have been like to watch the building fall, to feel responsible for the lives inside, to be unable to save so many. She knows that if given the chance before it collapsed, Morse would have run into Cranmer House without hesitation. The weight of responsibility for other people’s safety came with the job, but she guessed that he blamed himself more than most for the inevitable losses. She hasn’t even been to the scene of the collapse and she’s sure the horror of it will haunt her for weeks, she shudders to think of the toll it will take on Morse. She hadn’t known he was living in a section house, and can think of nowhere that would suit him less. He certainly won’t find any comfort there. She realizes how little she knows about his life these days and thinks back to a time when she could count on passing him in the hall most mornings, with wrinkled shirt and bright eyes, a shy grin darting across his boyish face. Life holds so much for her now, a job she cares about, the freedom of a flat with friends, new and exciting opportunities, experiences, people. But for all she’s gained, she’s lost things along the way. She wonders when it was exactly she lost him.

She spends another hour moving from bed to bed, from sorrow to sorrow. It’s getting late, but the thought of Sandra Reynolds alone, her mother still unconscious in another wing of the hospital, draws her back to the child’s bedside. Joan sits beside the girl, reciting the remembered fairy tales of her own childhood, leaving out the wolves and witches, until Sandra falls asleep. 

* * *

Once all the victims are interviewed and in temporary beds for the night at the school, Morse heads to the hospital. He walks down the darkened corridor, the lingering ringing in his ears and ache in his head stubbornly ignored. It’s pretty deserted at this hour, most everyone else has gone home. Those that still have a home left to go to. For a moment he can feel again the earth rumbling beneath his feet, can see the floors literally falling out from under all those people, can feel the weight of that small girl’s body in his arms. All day he’s kept moving, kept focused on the next task, the next way he might help in a situation in which he feels so helpless. But it isn't entirely selfless. He isn’t ready to relive everything he’s seen and felt today, to play the unforgiving slideshow in his head, so he keeps moving. 

He walks into the dimly lit hospital room. The shades are drawn, the rows of beds all filled. A nurse on duty at the desk looks up to give him a quick nod as he passes. His eyes fall on Joan sitting with arms crossed beside Sandra’s bed. There was a time he carried the constant hope of seeing her, when even the bleakest day might be gilded by just passing her in the hall. Lately seeing her brings equal pain and pleasure. Running into her is like sailing past a land desperately loved and longed for, being able only to gaze at the distant shore. He’s homesick for something he’s never even had. Tonight at least he’s too drained to feel much of anything. It’s almost a comfort to find her here. Almost.

* * *

  
  


Joan watches Sandra sleeping. It’s getting late, she should be heading home, but she can’t seem to make herself go. She feels eyes on her and looks up to see Morse. And even here, amongst all this, she feels the old familiar tug. She gets up quickly and walks to meet him at the end of Sandra’s bed. Dust clings to his suit and hair. There’s an emptiness about him that makes her ache.

“Thought I’d see if she was alright,” he says quietly.

Joan nods, understanding.

“How is she?” he asks, looking down at the sleeping girl.

“Hmmm,” Joan nods. What is there to say? Sandra is safe, but alone here in a hospital bed instead of home with her mother. Still, it could have been worse, if not for him.

“How’s her mum?” he asks. All day they’ve been on his mind. No child should be left motherless.

“Hangin in there,” Joan replies. Olive Reynolds was still unconscious. She’d be lucky if broken bones were the least of her injuries. 

He looks over at Joan. This is the sort of tragedy words can’t touch. 

She meets his eyes. It’s as though the weight of Cranmer House rests on his shoulders. She wishes she could wipe the streak of dirt from his cheek, could fix him a meal, could run him a hot bath and rub his shoulders afterwards, could lie with her arms around him through the sleepless night that must await them both. 

“You should be at home,” she says, though she knows there’s probably nowhere he feels at home now. 

“Hmm.” He gives a dull laugh. “Home. So should she, so should her mother, so should everyone.”

She looks at him, at the once wistful eyes now turned jaded. She has to look away. She wonders if his refusal to go home is his penance or his protection. 

“Accidents happen,” she says. 

“Not like this.” His voice is tired but determined. “Somebody’s gotta be responsible.”

She looks at him, worried. He always has to find an answer, always has to find a place to lay the blame. Until then he’ll carry it himself. 

He shakes his head and looks around the room with a sort of distracted despair. He sighs.

“Is there anything I can do?” His voice is almost pleading. It isn’t enough. None of it is enough. How can other people just go home and go on with their lives? He knows it’s all he’ll think about, all he’ll see.

“You’ve done your bit.” She looks at him pointedly. “And more.” 

Looking down at Sandra, he gives a small nod.

“Right. Well, goodnight,” he says resignedly, barely giving Joan another glance before he turns to leave. 

“Goodnight,” she replies to his back, as he walks away.

She watches him go. It’s as though a light has gone out in him. He seems hollowed out, a husk of the boy she once knew. She wonders if that boy is still inside him somewhere, if all the people they’ve been are stacked inside them like Russian dolls, the veneer of each growing less shiny and more brittle.

In her job she sees terrible things too. She spends nights awake wrestling with the unfairness of the world, with how little she can do to right things. But it isn’t her whole life. It’s different for Morse, she thinks. He has so little outside of work to distract him, to balance out the scales of light and darkness. What she can never quite determine is whether he is obsessed with work because he has so little else or whether he has so little else because his work so completely consumes him. She suspects he doesn’t know the answer any more than she does.

* * *

  
  


Joan sits at Sandra’s bedside for another hour. It’s almost ten, the child will probably sleep until morning. She rises, stretching her stiff legs, nods to the night nurse and quietly slips out of the room. As she makes her way down the hall she passes the staff break room. She sees Morse standing there, hands on the counter, his head hanging down, lost in thought. 

She walks into the room. “Morse, what are you still doing here? You need to go home.” Her voice is tinged with exasperation. Is he really so unable to take care of himself? Is he just going to roam the hospital all night?

He looks up at her. There’s nothing to say. He can’t make himself leave. There’s nowhere to go. 

He shrugs his shoulders, shaking his head and looking to the ceiling. He’s so frustrated and tired he’s afraid he might cry.

She should go. Joan knows she should go. But how can she leave him like this? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Still, she can’t resist, she walks over to him. 

He can’t do this, not tonight. He keeps his eyes on the ceiling as she comes to stand in front of him. He wishes she would just turn and leave and not look back. He wishes she would wrap her arms around him, wishes he could hold her and make the rest of the world fall away. He wishes for anything but this endless dance in between. 

Joan needs him to look at her, to listen to reason. Without meaning to, her hand reaches out to touch his cheek. The gesture is so familiar, the way she can’t help but reach out for him, the way his eyes turn to look into hers, the longing so desperate she can scarcely breathe. 

He can’t help it. He reaches to take hold of her hand against his cheek. He knows where this goes, he’ll pay for it later, but how can a drowning man resist a lifeboat? He wants her so badly. He wants her to want him, wants her to save him. He has nothing. She could be his everything. 

The moment his hand reaches up for hers she feels herself pulled apart by desire and regret. She can’t do this again. She wants him so badly. She wants to save him. From his loneliness, from his sorrow, from himself. She wants to give herself to him completely. But she can’t. Why must it be like this every time? The feelings so real and the timing so wrong. 

She’s going to have to tell him. But not here. 

She smiles at him, her eyes hold the softness before a blow. She makes herself pull her hand away from his cheek. Makes herself step back when she so desperately wants to move closer. 

“Come on. Let’s go,” she says with a nod to the door, “I’m starving and there’s no point asking when you last ate. Let’s go have a drink and something to eat.”

He’s too tired to argue, to make his usual excuses and retreat. He swallows his disappointment and nods at her. 

She puts her arm through his and they walk out of the hospital and into the waiting night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, this really is going somewhere eventually. They're finally going to talk in the next chapter instead of just looking at one another sadly. Amazon Prime has a still for Deguello of Joan touching Morse's cheek and him holding onto her hand and since the scene was cut I tried to create one for it here. I apologize that my writing is all feelings and absolutely no plot. I so appreciate anyone following along!


	4. What We Cannot Hold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joan thinks with frustration that making conversation with the man is like squeezing blood from a stone. She wishes they could just talk, that it didn’t have to feel like a never ending game of tug of war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “From what we cannot hold the stars are made.”  
> -W.S. Merwin 
> 
> The stars began to burn  
> through the sheets of clouds,  
> and there was a new voice  
> which you slowly  
> recognized as your own,  
> that kept you company  
> as you strode deeper and deeper  
> into the world,  
> determined to do  
> the only thing you could do --  
> determined to save  
> the only life that you could save.  
> -Mary Oliver from The Journey

Joan suggests a pub a few blocks away and Morse nods in agreement. He knows his silence leans toward sulking and chides himself for being such poor company when she’s so obviously trying to be kind to him. He just doesn’t have it in him to pretend to be anything he’s not tonight. 

They walk in bated silence, matching one another’s footsteps, their timing in sync for once. Fallen leaves crunch beneath their feet, whispering remembrances of golden promise. His mind buzzes around the feel of her arm threaded through his, the intimacy and nonchalance of the gesture a reminder of what they have been, of what they could be. He wishes he could turn his mind off and immerse himself in her company. But he can’t help analyzing her every look and movement, searching for clues. He wants to know where this is leading. But all he knows is that they are heading somewhere together, intertwined in this moment, if nothing else. 

Time is different when he’s with her, the still tide pool of the now, surrounded on both sides by currents of past memories and future hopes, pulling him out beyond his depth. _We had fed the heart on fantasies, the heart’s grown brutal from the fare_. He’s let himself imagine too much, hope for too much, for too long. It can’t go on like this. Still, tonight he just wants to hold onto her, while he can.

Joan picks up her old hobby of wondering what he’s thinking, wondering what he feels. She thinks of walking home with him from that double date all those years ago, still the only date they’ve ever been on, and even then only accidentally. Up until then she’d liked to tease him, to make him blush. There was no denying his good looks, and his shyness had made her feel powerful. Flirting with him felt both safe and just a bit forbidden. It went no further than that. 

But that night a spark of longing lit within her as he walked her home, as she gave him advice on how to win over another girl, all the while wishing it could be her instead. Sometimes she wished she could go back to that night and kiss him. That she could have acted on her feelings while they were still a small, hopeful spark. When it could have been just a bit of fun, when he might have been just another boy. But that small spark had grown, the flames fed with each denial. She can’t extinguish the torch she carries for him now, anymore than she can stop her heart from beating or lungs from breathing. 

She thinks back to that night on the roof. The clouds drifting above and the city unfurled beneath them. All that possibility. She’d been so eager for him to come, to see that she was really alright, to leave the past behind them. It was unlike him to actually show up to a party, but he had, and it meant more to her than she could say. So she’d taken him up there to see the beauty that she’d discovered in this new life, her grip on it still so tenuous that she couldn’t be sure she could hold onto it as well as someone else. Not yet. He’d held back and she’d felt an invisible bridge open up between them, one she was unable to cross and so pretended not to notice. He’d given her so much, but she couldn’t give him more than this, and didn’t know how to tell him. How could she answer a question that he couldn’t ask? 

And so she’d told him about Claudine. Because he needed looking after, and she was still learning to look after herself. Because Claudine was beautiful and worldly and fun, and perhaps because she knew that Claudine was only ever passing through on the way to somewhere else. And then she’d wished she could take it back because the look on his face made it harder than ever not to wrap her arms around him. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him, but somehow she always seemed to. She’d watched him walk away, and he had found Claudine after all. 

And then Claudine had left. And Joan had sought out Morse, to find that he wanted company for his misery, rather than a hand to help him out of it. So she’d left, and been surprised when he followed and walked her home, the way he used to, the conversation flowing easily and the silences companionable rather than fraught. It had felt so easy between them, so right, that she’d been unwilling to leave it at the doorstep, afraid that next time they met the spell might be broken. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from asking if he wanted to come in, hadn’t let herself think about what it might mean. 

But he didn’t go in much for coffee. And she hadn’t been sure if he was saying no to an invitation that he mistook for pity or saying no to the possibility of another heartbreak so soon, or if he was saying that he didn’t feel that way about her. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and she hardly knew what she was saying as she told him goodbye, regretting her spontaneous candor. He had other things to do. And what was it she was doing? 

Maybe it had all been in her head, his feelings for her, maybe she’d just been some problem to solve, maybe she’d spent years pining after a man who had left her behind long ago. How well did she even know him, really? They’d shared more silence than words. All this time some part of her had been waiting for the moment when the stars might finally align for them. But she couldn’t spend her life waiting. 

And so the refusal had been on her lips from the moment she saw him standing outside her doorstep once again. She was tired of the back and forth, of desire deferred, of being unable to move forward. She’d been a little afraid of the new life she’d worked so hard to make for herself, unsure of the shape it should take, wondering if she should try to mould herself into the piece that would finally solve the puzzle of how the two of them were supposed to fit together. But no longer. 

She’d just gotten home from an afternoon with her mother, and had seen the way resentment could grow between two people like a weed, the roots stretching back through years of sacrifice, choking the love that had once bloomed. Her parents still loved one another deep down, she knew that, but the cold distance between them lately filled Joan with dread. She did not want that life. She’d enrolled in a night class and was looking into an internship with the welfare department. And now, when it suited him, Morse had shown up looking for--what? She couldn’t be sure, all she’d been sure of was that she couldn’t do this again, not when she finally felt she was moving towards something that mattered, towards what she was meant to do with her life. 

So she’d walked away, she’d tried to forget. And then when she’d seen him again he was so different, things between them were so different, but what she felt for him hadn’t changed. She loved him. It was as plain as that. Hiding from a thing didn’t change it. But loving him didn’t change who she was either. She loved her work, her life, her freedom. Loving him didn’t mean she could build a life with him. And when it came to Morse, she felt there would be no in between.

They reach the pub and she lets go of his arm as he opens the door for her. Both of them hating to let go, hating having arrived, wanting to remain wrapped together in the nescient darkness.

The bar is bustling with boisterous clusters of conversation, the patrons all already a few drinks into the night’s revelry. Joan and Morse make their way to the bar and order. This time of night the only food on offer is a bag of crisps. With this and their drinks in hand, they wind their way through the room and find a somewhat secluded table against the wood paneled back wall. 

Morse takes a long swig of his drink the moment they’re seated, knowing that the sooner he gets it down the sooner he’ll start to feel its comforting numbness, dulling the edges of memory.

“You should eat something first, you know. Not good to drink on an empty stomach, though I’m sure yours is used to it by now,” Joan says, pushing the bag of crisps toward him. She can hear her mother in the words, and hopes they come off as teasing rather than nagging.

“ _Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale_ ,” he replies.

“Just because they’re poetic that doesn’t mean they’re words to live by, ” she says with a smile. “Led very long, happy lives did they, those poets you’re so fond of quoting?”

He grants her a reluctant grin.

Joan studies him across the table, his downcast eyes, the truculent turn of his mouth, the thumb of one hand anxiously rubbing invisible circles on the palm of the other. She thinks of putting it off, of waiting for a better time. But she knows well enough that there will never be a right time. She’s left it too long already. She takes a deep breath and smiles. 

“So, tell me about things with you. I hardly see you these days.” She hopes he doesn’t feel she’s putting him on the spot. She wants him to know she’s here as a friend, she’s in his corner. She cares.

“Not much to tell.” What _can_ he tell her? That when he’s alone tonight the memories of Cranmer House will press in on him from all sides until he can barely breathe? That his last date was with a murderer? That he’s fighting desperately to hold the line between right and wrong and can’t be sure which side her father stands on anymore? That still, every time he closes his eyes, he sees George’s face? 

Joan thinks with frustration that making conversation with the man is like squeezing blood from a stone. She wishes they could just _talk_ , that it didn’t have to feel like a never ending game of tug of war.

“Are you alright?” Before he can give the automatic reply, she presses on, “ I mean are you _really_ alright?” 

“You know me...” He says, his eyes on the table rather than her.

“Do I?” She certainly wonders sometimes. “I’m worried about you.”

“You’ve no need to be. I’m not your concern.”

“I wasn’t your concern, back then.” She struggles to talk about it even now, “But you were my lifeline.”

“Hardly that,” he scoffs. Everything he’d wanted to be to her, then. None of it had been enough.

“Exactly that,” her voice is firm. “You were the only one Morse, the only thing standing between me and that cliff I couldn’t back away from. All those times you would have saved me. Don’t you know how much I wanted to let you? But I didn’t think I deserved to be saved, I didn’t think I deserved you. And then finally I figured out I had to save myself, and I thought that maybe someday... “ She has to tread carefully now, “Somehow it just never worked out that way..”

There’s a buoyancy in his eyes now that breaks her. He looks at her with the words pressing against his lips, begging to be spoken.

The silence between them is a loaded gun. Joan wishes she could turn back time, wishes she could make the conversation go the way she’d planned. She has to tell him, now, before he says something they’ll both regret. He isn’t going to understand, she knows that, but she has to try.

“I care about you, Morse. I’m always going to care. I need you to know that.” She looks at him, begging him to believe it. 

“I’m leaving,” she says quietly, her eyes shifting down to the table. “The welfare department has offered me a secondment. In Edinburgh.”

 _Of course_ , he thinks, and hates himself for stepping on the trap door of hope once again.

“Congratulations,” he says flatly. “When do you leave?”

“Four days. Taking the overnight train there on Friday evening.” 

Guilt floods her cheeks, but how much notice was she supposed to give him, when they barely see one another? What are they to one another? What do they owe each other?

“How long?” He asks.

“A year. Maybe more, if it seems like a good fit.” 

He nods and takes another drink. Something that had dared to bloom inside him brittles with frost.

“I can’t miss this chance, the timing isn’t what I’d like but...” She shrugs, helplessly.

“I imagine it’s a hard time to leave, with trying to get the residents of Cranmer House situated.” His voice is cold, emotionless.

He must know that’s not what she meant, but it’s true enough. “Yes,” she says. 

The silence spreads between them.

“I’m sorry,” Joan says. And she is, sorry that things have turned out this way, sorry to have hurt him, sorry for what she wants and for what she must give up to get it.

“You’ve nothing to apologize for. Nothing keeping you here.”

“It isn’t that simple,” she replies, her eyes on him.

“You’re going.”

“Yes,” she admits. “I need to. I need to see what’s out there. I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. I want something more than the house, husband, kids, never leaving the place I’ve lived my whole life except for maybe a trip to the seaside once a year.”

“Is it really so bad?” He can’t keep the hurt from his voice. “Having a family?” 

“Of course not.” How can she make him understand? “I just want something bigger than the four walls of some tidy little house. I want to make a difference in the world. I don’t want my life to be just a supporting role in someone else’s story. It’s different for you, you can have a family and still have your work.”

“Well, I don’t suppose there’s much chance of that,” he says bitterly. “Not all of us get what we want. But I don’t think it’s such a bad way to spend your life, building a family. You could still have a job.”

“A job yes, something part time, something to keep me busy, get me out of the house. But not a career. I couldn’t do the kind of work I want to do,” an undercurrent of heat rises in her voice.

“Someone has to spend their days seeing to babies and dusting and shopping and getting dinner on the table by six. I know how it works, Morse, bit by bit your own ambitions fall away until your highest hope is a new set of sitting room curtains or the latest in vacuum cleaners. Mum’s spent her whole life looking after us, always putting herself last, all those times dad got called away or showed up late or never showed up at all because of work, she had to hold it all together for us. And what did she get for her efforts but long nights sitting beside the phone, wondering if this was the time he would never make it home again? I’m not saying what she’s spent her life doing isn’t important. But I couldn’t do it, I don’t want that life.”

“You wouldn’t have to be a copper’s wife,” he points out. “There are other jobs.”

“Not for you."

There it is, cards on the table. When she thinks of married life, for better or worse, it’s only ever him she imagines beside her.

“There’s more to life than work,” he argues, an edge of desperation in his voice. “I’ve thought of other things, teaching maybe. If I found someone to build a life with I wouldn’t let work get in the way. It would be enough to have someone to love, to have a family. Someone to wake up to in the morning, to come home to at night,” he looks at her pleadingly. No use in hypotheticals, they both know what they’re saying. “We’d be together. Nothing else would matter.”

God, how she wants to believe it.

But she tries to picture him teaching, and can’t help thinking it would bore him. She imagines how he would hate going over the same material year after year, answering the same questions and dealing with the same youthful antics. He’s already doing the work he was meant for, of that she has no doubt. And if the price he’s already paid for doing it hasn’t been enough to make him leave police work, nothing will. Something in him needs to solve these problems, to right these wrongs, whatever the cost. 

And the idea that work wouldn’t matter once he had a family would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. Even her father, a family man through and through, had so often needed to put work first. Did Morse really think his obsession with finding answers could be left by the hat stand when he walked in the door at night? After all, wasn’t it Morse who’d stolen her father away from her parents’ anniversary party to solve another case that couldn’t wait? She wouldn’t be surprised if the man were late to his own wedding while on the trail of some obscure lead. 

And even as she argues this to herself, the image of Morse in a tux, waiting at the altar comes unbidden to her mind, and she makes herself push the thought away. That wife he pictures waiting for him when he gets home, what fills her days, what keeps her up at night? Joan thinks she knows the answer too well. Maybe he imagines that having a family will make him the man he wants to be instead of the man he is. But we carry ourselves into whatever future we arrive at. She knows well enough that you can’t outrun who you are. 

“Do you think it would be that easy?” she asks, “Leaving the work you love?”

“Love doesn't really enter into it.”

“The work you're meant for then.”

“Am I? Meant for it?” He asks incredulously.

“I think if you left you’d regret it. Maybe even start to resent whatever made you leave,” she says gently. “I think your work is part of who you are.”

“Maybe it’s all I am.” He empties the last of his drink.

“You know that’s not true."

“Sometimes I wonder,” he says more to himself than her. 

He takes a deep breath and purses his lips. “Well, anyway, doesn’t matter much, does it?”

“You’re angry with me,” she says quietly.

“Why would I be angry?” He shakes his head. His voice is dull. “I’m happy for you.”

They sit across the table from one another, miles from where they were when they first sat down. 

“I think I’ll take a cab home,” Joan says finally. “I could drop you?”

“No. I’ll walk, thanks."

They stand outside the pub, waiting for her cab to arrive, with nothing left to say. 

_This is it then_ , Joan thinks. All that time spent wondering, only to never know. Whatever this is, whatever they have been doing, it’s over now.

The cab pulls up and he opens the door for her. 

“Goodnight Miss Thursday. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Goodnight Morse,” she says. And he closes the door.

* * *

_Thursday night_

Morse hangs up the morgue phone. It’s settled, then. Come morning there will be an end to it, one way or another. It’s almost a relief, to finally be able to do something, to have someone to blame other than himself. But thinking of Max, an agony of hours hang ahead of him. He runs his fingers along the familiar outline of the glasses, and thinks of brokenness beyond repair.

There’s one last call to make. He can’t leave things as they are, not when there might never be another time. _The realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave_. He dials before he can change his mind.

Joan has almost succeeded in squeezing her overstuffed suitcase shut when she hears the phone ring. Her flatmates are out for the night, so she rushes down the hall to the phone. Who could be calling at this hour?

“Hello?” She answers breathlessly.

“Miss Thursday?” He tries to sound at ease.

“Morse?” Fear creeps into Joan’s voice. “Is everything alright? Is it dad?”

“No,” he rushes to reassure her. “No everything’s fine.” 

Joan’s shoulders drop with relief. “It’s late.”

“I know. I didn’t think.” His mouth is cotton dry with anxiety. “ I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No,” she says with a sigh. “Just finishing packing.”

“I just wanted to call before you left.” He realizes how ridiculous this sounds, calling her at midnight. But of course he can’t explain.

“Well, I’m not leaving until tomorrow night,” she says with a small laugh.

“I just...” If he could only find the words, this once, when it might be his last chance. He thinks wryly that whatever is waiting for him at the quarry will be easier than this. “I’ve already left too much unsaid. I’m sorry about the other night. You were being kind, you’ve always been kind, and I was sullen and selfish. You’ve already given me more than I could have wished for or deserved. You deserve more than I could ever...” He stops himself, no use in that now. “You deserve every happiness in the world.”

“So do you, Morse.” She means it so much her voice catches in her throat. “Is everything really alright?”

“I’ve just never been much good at goodbyes,” he says softly. “But I couldn’t leave you without one.”

Something in his voice makes her wish she could reach through the phone. “You make it sound like forever, we will see one another again, you know.” She needs to remind herself, as much as him.

“Well, until we meet again, then.” He takes a deep breath to steady himself, and forces the words out. “Goodbye, Miss Thursday.”

“Goodbye, Morse,” she replies reluctantly, hating the feel of the words on her tongue.

He hangs up and Joan is left with a buzzing dial tone in her ear, and then only its absence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "We had fed the heart on fantasies, the hearts grown brutal from the fare" is from The Stare's Nest by Yeats
> 
> “Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale" is a from a Housman poem
> 
> "The realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave." is a George Eliot quote


	5. What We Leave Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Win and Joan get their own chapter set at the end of Deguello, while the city boys are having their showdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.” -George Eliot  
> (Basically my personal motto when writing these two, if I'm honest)
> 
> Sorry, but I ended up needing to squeeze another chapter in before the end. Wasn't planning on it but that's how it panned out. This is set right after the last one left off, at the end of Deguello. Joan gets her own chapter here, because we already know what happened with Morse. 
> 
> I don't think I'm physically able to write a Morse/Joan fic without some melodramatic the love of your life is in danger moment of truth nonsense. I am who I am. So, here we are.

Joan heads to bed soon after Morse’s call, but she’s too on edge to sleep. It isn’t just having her life packed away and knowing that she’ll be on her way tomorrow night to a new job in a new city. She can’t stop thinking about the sound of his voice on the phone. She plays the conversation in her head again and again, trying to decipher the meaning behind the words, wondering what was left unsaid. She tries to tell herself the call was a kind of closure, but instead worry burrows its way inside her, leaving her feeling hollow and restless.

Eventually she gives up on sleep and heads in for her last morning of work. The sleepless night hasn’t left her tired, but keyed up, her muscles taut with anticipation. Everything feels a bit unreal. Being busy at work helps, and the morning passes quickly. She says her goodbyes to Viv, with many thanks and promises to keep in touch. Viv and this job have helped her become who she is, helped her understand who she wants to be. She wonders whether she'll ever be back. Even if she does return in a year, she’ll be different, everything will be different.

She takes the bus to her parents’ house. Her train doesn’t leave until six and she hadn’t wanted anyone to see her off at the station, so last week she and mum had agreed to a late lunch date this afternoon. 

Joan knocks, expecting her mother to be pleased to see her and ready to go, as usual. Instead, she takes a long time in answering the door. When she finally does, she’s like a different woman. Her face is drawn and pale, her eyes swollen and rimmed with red. She looks older, more fragile, there’s a weariness in her shoulders Joan’s never seen before. She’s twisting a handkerchief between her fingers, and gives Joan an unconvincing smile.

Joan’s stomach clenches. 

“Mum, what is it?” She asks as she enters the hallway, closing the door behind her. “Is it Sam?”

“No,” her mother shakes her head. “No, not Sam.”

“Dad then?”

“No,” another forced smile. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“Everything is not fine. You don’t have to shield me from things,” Joan says with frustration. “I’m not a child. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” her mother says, not meeting Joan’s eyes. She walks into the sitting room and sits on the sofa, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles whiten. 

“What’s nothing?” Joan asks as she sits beside her.

“Your father, he left a note,” her mother’s voice breaks, and Joan feels the bolts of her life coming loose. 

“What kind of note? What do you mean?”

“I think something’s going on with work. Something is happening. Now maybe or maybe it’s already happened,” she starts to cry. “I don’t know what. I don’t know. I think your father left a note because he wasn’t sure he’d be coming home.”

Joan feels as though someone has tipped the world over and everything she thought she knew is spilling out. 

She thinks of the call, that bitter December, of the look on her mother’s face that night. It was the one time her stolid mask had slipped and they had seen what must have been hiding beneath all along, that desperate terror. The torment of waiting. And now this. 

“Can I read it?” Joan asks.

Her mother looks away.

“Please,” Joan pleads.

Her mother takes a folded piece of paper from the pocket of her cardigan and hands it to Joan. She opens it and reads:

_My darling Win,_

_For too long I have let stubbornness and guilt hold back the apology I owed you. I wish that I could take back all that time wasted, that distance I let grow between us when I should have reached out and held tight to the person I treasure most in this world. How quickly life passes, how easily we forget the very things we live and breathe for. Whatever I may have done, whatever wrong turns I may have taken along the way, I have always been led back to you, to the home you’ve filled with love and to the light you’ve brought to my life when all else was darkness. I am not proud of who I have lately become. But all that is good in me is because of you._

_Any life taken is a tragedy, but a young life cut short is a wrong that must be put right. It was my job to see that a young man was looked after and I failed. And I failed him yet again in turning away from the rot I knew was spreading through the force he died in the service of. Today I must try to right those wrongs. I am fortunate to know men who are better and braver than I will ever be. Men who have never forgotten what it is we stand for. I will gladly give all that I am to stand beside them, to try to be the man you deserve._

_All my life’s joy is wrapped up in you. Whatever happens, know that you have made me happier than any man could hope to be, and that since the day we first met, you have not spent a single moment outside my heart._

_All my love, Always_

_Fred_

Joan feels tears welling in her eyes and tries to hold them back. Even as an adult she wants her parents to be pillars, not people. She wants to believe them unbreakable. But her mother has held up the pretense long enough. It’s Joan’s turn to bear some of the weight.

She hands the letter back to her mother.

“Have you tried calling the station?” She asks, knowing the answer.

“Yes. A few times. I spoke to a desk sergeant. But no one seems to know where he is.”

“What about Morse or Jim?”

Her mother looks at her, and Joan can see she’s still trying to shield her.

“They’re together.” Joan says. “Whatever it is, they’re all there together.”

Her mother nods. “I think they must be. I’m sure it will be alright. I’m sure they’re fine. I’m probably making a fuss for nothing.”

But there’s no use in denials. Joan has read the note. She knows what’s at stake. Whatever is going on, there’s no guarantee any of them are walking away from it. There’s no guarantee she’s going to see them again. And she remembers what she’s learned before and tried to forget. There are no guarantees in this life, except that it will end.

She knows now what that call last night meant, knows that it may have been the last time she will ever hear Morse’s voice. She knows everything she might lose. 

She thinks of all the times her mother has endured this, of how long she’s already endured it today. Every minute an ache. Joan has been afraid, of course, since she was a child, that something might happen to her father. But they were the fleeting fears of a child, easily soothed and forgotten. Her mother had known exactly what she might be losing every time her father walked out that door. She was stronger than Joan would ever be, than Joan ever wanted to have to be.

“I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure they’re all fine and we’ll hear from dad soon,” Joan says with forced calm, her insides twisting. “Probably best if we keep busy. I know you’ll want to be here when he calls. Is there something here we can fix for lunch?”

Her mother gives a grateful smile. “Yes. Good idea. I was planning on vegetable soup tonight but we could have it now. Maybe you could help me make it?”

“Sounds perfect,” Joan says. 

She can’t keep from asking, “When did you last call?”

“About half an hour ago. They said they’d leave a message on his desk for him to call when he gets in.”

“Ok,” Joan tries to sound reassured. “I’m sure we’ll hear from him soon.”

Her mother squeezes her hand, and as Joan looks into her eyes some understanding passes between them, of what they refuse to bring to life with words.

They head into the kitchen and start on the soup. Joan takes up the well remembered tasks of her childhood, peeling potatoes and carrots. She tries to still her shaking hands and slip into the comforting familiarity of muscle memory, of a job she did countless times back when she felt safe and the world was simple. 

Joan looks over at her mother. “If anything ever happens, if you just need to talk or are worried about anything, you can call me, you know. I mean it when I say you don’t have to protect me anymore.”

“I know,” her mother smiles. “Old habits I suppose,” She puts down the knife she was chopping with and looks at Joan. “And I didn’t want to worry you today, when you’re starting out on your new adventure.” 

Joan feels a lump rise in her throat. “I’m still not sure I’m doing the right thing in going. Giving up my flat and job and—everything else here.” The thought of leaving now, with everything upended, makes her insides flinch.

Her mother gazes at her tenderly. “I’ve seen the change in you since you started this job, you’ve found something you love. This kind of opportunity might not come again.”

Joan thinks how easily a thing can slip through your fingers, and then be gone forever.

“Life is full of risks,” her mother says gently, “but I don’t think you’ll regret going after what you want.”

“But I want so many different things,” tears of frustration and worry well in Joan’s eyes. “I just don’t want to do something I’ll regret.”

“There’s a whole world waiting for you out there. Whether it ends up being right for you or not, never knowing, that’s what I think you’d regret.”

Joan knows it’s true. It’s wondering what might have been that haunts you.

Her mother gives a soft smile. "You know, I was terrified before your father and I were married that I was making the wrong decision."

"You were?" Joan grins.

"I knew we were only going to have those two days before he shipped out. I wasn't sure we'd ever get more than that, and I didn't know if I could bear it, all that time spent not knowing. Your grandmother tried to talk me out of it, said it was just asking for heartbreak. But something in me just knew it was the right thing, whatever anyone said, however hard it might be, I just knew. That didn't stop me fretting endlessly about it beforehand, but it always came back to the same thing, I wanted whatever time we could get. I think deep down we usually know what we most want, and what we need to do to get it, the hard part is being brave enough to trust what you know to be true."

"What if it had been all the time you got? Would you have regretted it then?"

Her mother shakes her head. "I could never have regretted it. The heartbreak would have come either way, I couldn't just decide to stop loving him because he might not come back. I wanted those two days to hold onto. And I wanted your father to have them to take with him. We were both so different by the time he came back, love changes all the time, through the years, because we change. But all along the way there are these moments of time like treasure, these little windows of happiness. You have to grab hold of them when you can." 

“I’ll miss you,” Joan says. “I’ll miss this. It won’t be the same just talking on the phone.”

“We’ll be alright,” her mother assures her. “You just be sure to call me once a week. I like to know what’s going on with you, to be able to picture your life when you’re away.”

Joan nods and thinks of that other morning her mother awoke to a note. For the first time she fully realizes what that must have done to her mother, to both her parents. Those hastily scribbled lines and then weeks with no word. Joan’s life was not the only one that fell apart that day. But she had only been able to think of herself then, had not really been thinking at all, it had been more reaction than decision. She can’t blame herself for what she did back then, for the choices she made out of desperation, but she doesn’t even recognize that person anymore.

And then Joan thinks of the bank. She tries, even now, not to think about that day, or the days that followed. Even once she’d stopped running and faced what had happened, it didn’t go away. A thing like that didn’t ever really go away. She still carries it with her. 

It’s strange, but it isn’t the gun to her own head that visits her in vivid nightmares. When the gun had been pressed against her temple she had felt so numb with fear that it almost didn’t seem real, it had been as though she were outside herself, watching. Those memories were just a blur now, not sharp enough to cause pain anymore, just a sort of wonder that it had ever happened at all.

In some dreams it’s Ronnie she sees, and knows what’s coming but can’t stop it. The blood forever on her hands. The choices that can never be undone. In other dreams the gun is pointed at Morse, and the moment is somehow even more real than when she lived it. The stifling air acrid with fear and sweat, the useless war drum of her heart pounding away in her chest. She hardly dares to breathe, as if she can stop time with her stillness. She looks at his face, knowing it’s for the last time, and closes her eyes against the knowledge. And in her nightmares the phone never rings.

There are moments that slash the world in two, that cut your life into before and after.

She looks at the knife in her mother’s grip, at its gleaming blade. She remembers her hand against Morse’s cheek, the way he leaned his face into her touch, and feels she could kill anyone who hurt him with her bare hands.

She wants to run to the phone and call again, to go down to the station, to scour the whole city in search of them.

Her mother seems to sense Joan’s nerves crumbling. “Let’s give it half an hour and we’ll call again, alright?”

Joan nods and swallows down the fear, thick on her tongue.

They finish the soup and leave it simmering on the stove. They both know the preparation has been no more than a distraction. Their stomachs are too full of dread to eat. They sit on the sofa, a wave of worry cresting above their heads. 

Joan’s train leaves in a little over two hours. She still has to go back to her flat to get her suitcases and say a last goodbye to her flatmates. But of course, she can’t leave. Not until they know. If anything has happened she won’t be going at all. If anything has happened everything will change. 

The ticking clock taunts with its measured, mindless strokes. When it reaches 3:45 her mother squeezes her hand, gives Joan a reassuring nod and walks to the phone. 

Joan tries to remember to breathe. _In. Out. In. Out_. If anything had happened, they would have gotten a call. They’re alright. They have to be alright.

Her mother dials. Joan wants to crowd in beside her, to take the phone and demand answers herself. She sits, she clasps and unclasps her shaking hands, she breathes. _In. Out. In. Out._

“Jim?” Her mother’s voice is frantic.

Joan feels emptied by fear, she is a void, a vessel waiting to be filled with relief or despair. 

“This is Mrs. Thursday. Are Fred and Morse there with you? Are you all alright? Did something happen?” 

Her mother sighs, as if letting out a breath held all day. Hope rises in Joan’s chest like a balloon, threatening to burst.

“Well in that case,” her mother’s voice changes from anxious to furious, “you can tell him I’d like to know when he’ll be home.” 

Joan laughs, even as she starts to cry. The wave of relief washes over her, flooding her body. 

“Thank you, Sergeant Strange.”

Her mother hangs up the phone and walks over to the sofa. Joan stands and her mother wraps her in a hug. 

“They’re alright. Though I might murder your father myself after this.”

Joan laughs. She’s still shaking with adrenaline, a little light headed with weightlessness.

“He’s on his way home now. You should go,” her mother says. “You don’t want to miss your train.”

“Do you mind if I wait? I’d like to see dad before I go.”

Her mother smiles. “Of course not. ”

Not long after, they hear the door. Joan stays in the sitting room as her mother goes to the hallway. She wants to give them time to say whatever needs to be said between them.

After a few minutes her parents walk into the sitting room, her mother’s arm threaded through her father’s. Her father has an ease about him, the way he looks when she pictures him, so different from the man he’s been lately.

“Dad,” Joan says, coming over to him. She hugs him with abandon, as she would have as a child, stubborn independence and past struggles cast off for the moment. 

“You should have called sooner,” she chides.

“I know, I’m sorry,” her father replies, shaking his head, “I just got lost in it all for a bit there. I didn’t mean to worry you both.”

“Train leaves at six, doesn’t it?” He continues, “Let me drive you to your flat and then drop you at the station.”

“I’d love a ride to the flat. But I’ll see myself off at the station.”

“Alright, if that’s what you want.”

He holds her gaze. “We’re proud of you, you know.”

Joan smiles and nods. 

She longs to ask her father about what happened today, to know how close they all came to a different ending, to different lives. But she’s been down this road enough times to know asking is useless. 

They drive to her flat. There are hugs, goodbyes, promises to call in a few days when she’s settled. She hopes that when she’s gone her parents will lean on one another, that they might rebuild some of the closeness she’s seen eroding between them. 

She packs away a few last things and says goodbye to her flatmates. Before today she’d been so ready to move out, to leave behind the piling petty annoyances and silly tiffs. But it all seems so different now that it’s ending. They girls have bought champagne and give her a little toast. Joan hasn’t eaten since breakfast and the drink makes her feel a bit off balance, overly sentimental. She feels close to tears as they hug her goodbye. It’s been such a surreal day, it feels like such an abrupt end to everything. But there’s no time to dwell on it. A suitcase in each hand she walks out to the waiting cab.

She’d wanted to go to the station alone because she thought it would feel exhilarating, setting off on her own, starting a new life that would be what she alone made it. But the adrenaline rush she felt earlier has ebbed away. 

Instead she feels raw as an open wound, tender and exposed. She tells herself it’s the lack of sleep, it’s the champagne, it’s the stress of the day catching up with her. But as she sits on the platform she can’t shake the feeling. She feels the unease of a door left open, of something left undone. 

She watches a young couple on another bench whispering to one another, their hands clasped, their faces so close their foreheads touch. She wonders if they’re at the beginning or the end of their journey. Either way, they’re together, now. 

Joan gets up and walks to the phone box near the station entrance. She makes a few calls. After the last she mouths an address silently, over and over, like an incantation, so as not to forget. As her train pulls out of the station, she gets into a cab and says it aloud, as if magicking it into existence.

It’s growing dark when Joan gets out of the cab. She stands there a minute, a little in awe. It’s a proper house, permanent, one someone might spend a life in. She thinks how adult they’ve grown, how concrete their lives are becoming, of the weight their decisions carry now. 

She walks up to the bright red door, sets her suitcases down, and knocks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joan isn't the type to cast off her dreams, and as I've said, this is all supposed to be background to what we saw in series 6. So, the last chapter has to be what it has to be for us to end up where we do at the start of series 7. But these two deserve a bit of happiness first.
> 
> I felt like Win ended up being kind of a prop for Joan here, rather than a force in her own right, which I hate because I think she deserves more of a story line. I played around with POV but needed to keep it just to Joan to keep things moving forward. So, apologies on that.
> 
> According to the clocks in Deguello, Win finds the note a little after 9am and only talks to Jim to find out Fred is ok at 3:45. What a nightmare of a day for her.


	6. A Moment in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Better to have loved and lost?” His voice is bitter. Because he’s never loved without losing. Because he wants someone to love him enough to stay. 
> 
> “That’s just it, I don’t know,” she says. “I just know that leaving it like this, never knowing, when we could have something. Isn’t that better than nothing at all? I don’t know if it will make it better or worse. The last thing I want is to hurt you. This can just be a goodbye between friends if you want, I can go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it just keeps getting longer. There is one chapter, or two at most, left to go. I've only ever written one other multi-chapter fic before and I just posted all the chapters of that one at once, so it feels weird to sort of drag this out? But it also feels nice to post them when they're done rather than waiting until it's all finished. Anyway, I'm sorry it is ending up longer than I planned and I very much appreciate anyone sticking around to read it all.
> 
> We finally get to some sappy fluff here.

Morse is sprawled out on his back on the kitchen floor, neck craned up into the cabinet beneath the sink, spanner in hand, trying to fix a leaky pipe. It’s hard to know where to start getting the house in order, there’s scarcely a spot that doesn’t need some sort of cleaning or repair. He’s still got his work clothes on, jacket off and hung over a chair in the least dusty spot he could find. His shirt sleeves are rolled up, tie tucked into the front of his shirt. His clothes will be filthy after this, no doubt, but he was too exhausted to contemplate changing. The one dim bulb hanging overhead flickers warnings of its imminent demise and he hopes it will hold out until morning.

He probably should have cleaned the place before bringing his stuff in, but he was too anxious to get out of the section house to wait. He’d packed the car with what little he had last night, while trying to fill the time. A moving van had come by an hour ago with the few bits of furniture he had in storage. It wouldn’t fill a room, let alone the whole house. Still, it’s a start. It might be a wreck, but it’s his. A real home, even if it doesn’t feel much like one yet. 

It seems only fitting for this to be his first night here. A fresh start. The day has brought almost everything he could have hoped for. It should be enough, he should feel happy, and he does feel better than he has in a long time. But he can’t help picturing Joan, on a train headed out of Oxford, out of his life. 

He’s just tightened the valve when he hears a knock at the door. His brow creases in annoyance and surprise. Strange is the only one who even knows he’s here. Can’t the man leave him in peace for a night? Hoping that he’s at least brought a bottle as a housewarming gift, Morse straightens up and tries to brush off some of the dust and dirt clinging to his shirt and pants. 

He walks out of the kitchen and along the hall. The double doors to the entryway are open and he walks through to the front door. The only thing he can make out through the frosted glass is the outline of someone, blurry and indiscernible. He opens the door, readying himself to face his unwelcome first visitor. But it isn’t Strange. 

Joan’s standing there, on his doorstep. Though that’s impossible. He stands halfway across the threshold, not knowing what to say. He can’t understand it, her being here instead of just in his head. He doesn’t notice the suitcases, or the cornflower blue of the dress she’s wearing beneath her tan jacket. All he sees is her dark hair hanging thickly down around her shoulders, her cobalt eyes luminous even in the near darkness. He can’t take his eyes from her face, he’s unable to read her expression. 

As he opens the door the tension slides from Joan’s shoulders. She stands there a moment, not trying to read his thoughts, not wondering what comes next, just drinking him in. She doesn’t wait for him to say hello or invite her in. She’s done waiting. She doesn’t say a word. She just walks up and wraps her arms around him, as easily as if it’s for the thousandth time. She pulls him close and leans her face against the side of his neck, breathing him in.

He’s caught off guard. He doesn’t think about what’s happening. He doesn’t think at all. He just softens into her, her arms wrapped so tightly around him it’s almost hard to breathe, her fingers pressing pleasurably into his shoulder and back. He circles his arms around her waist, rests the side of his face gently against her forehead. He can smell the soft fragrance of her hair. He doesn’t want to know what it means. He doesn’t want to know anything but that she’s here with her arms around him.

They just stand there, holding on to one another. It feels so unutterably right, and it’s taken so long. 

Finally, she looks up at him. “You’re alright?”

“Yes.” He wonders how much she knows about what happened today.

She nods. She slides her hand from his shoulder down to his chest, just above his heart, and holds it there a moment. Then she lets her hands fall to her sides and steps back.

They look at one another, both unsure of what to say.

“I thought you were leaving,” he says.

“I am,” she admits. “Just not today.”

He takes a deep breath, nods his head.

“I told them I needed a little more time to get things settled here. I’m taking the early train on Monday morning.”

He doesn’t ask why, though he wants to. Safer to say nothing.

“When you called last night, it wasn’t just because I was leaving?” She asks.

“I wanted to right things. In case.”

“Dad left a note for mum this morning. We didn’t know what was going on, only that you were with him, that something was happening. For him to write that, for you to call...” She purses her lips, unable to say more.

He shakes his head. “It’s settled now. Done.”

They look at one another. Neither knows what comes next. He gives a nervous smile and she smiles back.

He motions to a smudge of gray on her sleeve. “I’ve ruined your jacket,” he looks down at his rumpled, dusty clothes. “I’m a mess. I’m sorry.”

She grins. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I didn’t give you much say in the matter.”

He can’t hold back his grin.

“Did you just move in today?” She asks, glancing around.

He nods. “First night here”

“Can I come in?” 

“Of course,” he says. Because what other answer is there? He motions her inside and grabs her suitcases. He sets them down in the entryway, and every bit of grime on the floor beneath them seems magnified.

She steps inside the hall and looks around. 

He watches her and is completely mortified at her seeing the house in this state. He wishes he could dissolve or evaporate into non-existance. Through her eyes he can see what an appalling disaster the place is, not just dirty, but an assault to the senses, indecent and shameful. He imagines something within her curling up in disgust, aghast that he would choose to spend even a moment here, let alone move in. His hands move to rub over the back of his head, just to have something to do. He’d ring his own neck with them if he could.

“I’m sorry. It isn’t fit for company, for anything but the wrecking ball really, right now.” 

“Don’t apologise,” she says. “I’m the one who showed up unannounced when you’ve only just moved in.”

She takes in the thick blanket of dust covering the floor, the tattered sheets hanging over the windows, the precarious tilt of the overhead light fixture, the graffiti marring the dirty, peeling wallpaper. She can say with all honesty that she’s never been in another house like it.

Her face breaks into a smile, and then she lets out a small laugh.

His cheeks redden. He looks down at the floor. He feels a little like crying. It’s as though the house is a display of every fault and iniquity within him. As though he’s been turned inside out and she can see how innately wrong he is, his inadequacy, the piece he’s lacking that makes other people whole and normal. He half hopes a meteor will hit and obliterate the whole bloody house and him along with it. 

“It’s a wreck, I know.” He keeps his eyes down, unable to look at her or their offending surroundings.

“It isn’t that. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s just so _you._ ”

“Broken, you mean?” 

She turns to him. “You aren’t broken, Morse,” she stops a minute, needing to make sure that sinks in. “It’s just so like you to choose a house that needs saving. To see the beauty in something broken, to believe you can fix it. And you will, you’ll make it beautiful. Make it all your own.”

“Will you show me around?” She asks.

He shrugs, still unsure, still feeling like this is the last place she should be. It isn’t fit for her to even set foot in, not like this. 

“You don’t have to show me, if you don’t want to. I’ve intruded enough. But I’d love to see it.”

He relents. In for a penny.

“Of course I’ll show you.” 

He leads her around downstairs, letting her take a quick peek in each room. He’s too nervous to linger long anywhere, to say much of anything. Despite what she said, she must think he was mad to buy the place, seeing it in this state. 

The downstairs gone over, they head up the staircase. In the bedroom nearest the stairs his mattress lays on the floor, the bed frame still in pieces leaning against the wall, a few boxes and crates scattered around the room, a lone lamp on one of the overturned crates. The other rooms are still empty, apart from a few broken chairs he’s yet to clear out. They head back downstairs and stand at the bottom of the staircase. 

“That concludes the grand tour,” he says jokingly, trying to mask his very real embarrassment. 

She gives him a smile. “Thank you. For showing me. I’m so excited for you.”

“I’ve got the weekend off, to try to make a start, at least.”

“Well, I shouldn’t keep you.” 

“What will you do now?” He asks, suddenly afraid that she’ll disappear as unexpectedly as she arrived. 

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I’m sure I could go stay with mum and dad until Monday. Tell them I missed my train.”

He meets her eyes. “Did you?”

“No,” she holds his gaze. “I needed to see you.”

“And now that you have?” 

Joan can hardly breathe, she feels a bit sick. This is it, now or never. A moment’s courage or a lifetime of regret.

“I have two days,” she says. “We could have two days.”

He tries to keep his face impassive, tries to wrap his mind around what she’s saying.

“If it’s not enough I’ll understand,” she rushes to fill the silence. “We can just leave things as they are.”

“Is that what you want?” 

She takes a deep breath. “I want to stop pretending,” her voice is desperate but determined. “I want to just _say it_.” 

“Say what?”

“That there’s something between us. Something real. Something I’ve never felt for anyone else,” she stops, looks into his eyes, swallows. “And I’ve wondered for so long. I just want to know. Even if it can only be for a little while.”

He turns his head away, tenses his jaw.

“Better to have loved and lost?” His voice is bitter. Because he’s never loved without losing. Because he wants someone to love him enough to stay. 

“That’s just it, I don’t know,” she says. “I just know that leaving it like this, never knowing, when we could have _something_. Isn’t that better than nothing at all? I don’t know if it will make it better or worse. The last thing I want is to hurt you. This can just be a goodbye between friends if you want, I can go.”

“And if I want you to stay?” His voice has softened.

“Then I’ll stay. Until I have to go.” 

He sighs, looking up at the ceiling instead of into her eyes, trying to reconcile everything he wanted with how little they will get. But longing isn’t a calculation. Love can’t be tallied. Something in him knows there won’t be another chance, not this time. What does he have to lose? He’d be a fool not to take whatever she’s able to give him. He’d be a fool to think he won’t want more.

She wonders if it’s so selfish as to be cruel, her asking this of him, when she’s the one leaving. She can’t help what she wants, but she’s not a spoiled child, she should know by now that she can’t have everything. Now she’s ruined even this fleeting moment of ease between them.

He looks at her, then. And she can see his answer in his eyes.

It isn’t even a choice, really. He would do anything for her. In a lifetime of wanting what he can’t have he’s never wanted anything more.

He walks over to her, slowly. He reaches out and his fingers delicately brush her cheek, then glide down the length of her face to curl beneath her chin. 

He can’t believe that he can just reach out and touch her this way, that she really does want this, really does want him.

“I want you to stay,” he says. And what he means is tonight. And what he means is forever.

He brings his face so close that his lips are almost, not quite, touching hers. She feels her breath grow heavy with want, her heart clamoring in her chest. He looks into her eyes. He pulls her close, his hands around her waist and in her hair, his lips hovering and then barely grazing hers, his mustache tickling the skin above her lip.

She reaches up and pulls him closer, until his body is pressing against hers and she has to back against the wall to stay upright. She wraps her arms around his neck to bring their lips together in a deep, full kiss.

It feels so good to give in, to let go. It’s far from his first kiss, but it’s the first time it’s ever felt like this, like he doesn’t want to stop for breath, like even air between them is an intrusion. 

She thinks how every other kiss in her life has been a waste, the fumbling and eager hands, the way for other men kissing had been just a necessary maneuver, something to be tumbled over on the way to what they hoped came next. Each touch from Morse holds such tenderness, his focus on her is so complete, she feels that he understands the language of her body’s silence, that each movement he makes is exactly what she wants, before she even knows she wants it.

They pull apart for a moment and it’s like waking up in another country, the room is both electrified and softened, heady with the possibilities of this uncharted territory they’ve arrived in.

They are both breathless, grinning these irrepressible grins. 

She sucks in her bottom lip, already missing the taste of him. 

“I’ve imagined that so many times,” she says. Because she doesn’t feel like holding anything back anymore. Because right now she wants him to know every single thought and feeling she’s ever had.

He raises his eyebrows in mock surprise, all of him humming with the thought of her thinking of him. 

“And how does reality compare?” He asks with a smirk.

“Too soon to say,” she says with a laugh, and pulls him toward her again.

They are both giddy, aching for more. She tugs gently on the hair at the nape of his neck as his tongue slides over hers. Her teeth pull playfully on his bottom lip and he gives a small whimper of pleasure. His lips move down her neck, his breath hot on her skin. Her body arches hungrily into his.

Both of them are drunk with it, this intoxicating power to make the other come undone.

Joan’s hands move to loosen his tie and she whispers in his ear, “Can we go upstairs?”

He nods eagerly, then grows still. He puts his hand against her cheek and tilts her face to look into his.

“Are you sure?” He asks quietly. “This... this is already more than enough, more than I could have ever...” He laughs and shakes his head, still in disbelief. “We don’t have to do more than this, unless you want to.”

She kisses him again, slow and gentle. 

“I’m sure,” she says, looking into his eyes. “Are you?”

He pulls her into another kiss, fierce and firm.

She turns to face the stairs, her back to him, and reaches her hands behind her to interlace with his, then walks up the steps with him trailing behind her. 

They walk into the bedroom and he stands behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“I suppose I should take off my jacket,” she says with a laugh. “I’m planning to stay awhile.”

He grins and slides it off her shoulders and then looks around for somewhere clean enough to put it. 

Joan turns to face him and sees a panicked look scurry into his eyes. She gives another laugh, takes the jacket from him and tosses it onto the floor. “Just the place,” she says.

His returning laugh releases any lingering insecurity. She’s everything he’s not, and yet she has this power to intuit what he’s feeling. He has never known anyone so kind, so disarming. She has an instinct for bringing out his better nature, when most people only seem to bring out the worst in him. 

She moves her hands to his tie and he tilts his head down, watching her fingers slowly release the knot. She slides the length of it around the back of his neck and lets it fall to the floor. Then she starts on the buttons of his shirt, slipping them through their confines one by one. There is no rush. She wants to retain every detail. There will only be one first time, and the last time is already on the horizon. 

She softly kisses his chest, his collarbone, slides the shirt from his shoulders and lets it drop to the floor. Then she turns away from him and gathers her hair to one side of her neck. He reaches up and delicately slides down the zipper of her dress, kissing her back and shoulder blades as the fabric opens. She lets the dress fall down around her ankles and turns to face him. He reaches up and runs the fingers of one hand through her hair while the other traces down her back. She wraps her arms around him, wanting his skin pressed against her.

She thinks how much she wants to hear her name in his mouth. And then she remembers that here, now, she can just tell him. Whatever she wants, she can just say it aloud. 

“Say my name,” she says. 

He leans his face close to hers, until their foreheads are touching.

“Joan,” he says, whispering the word like something holy.

They are both thinking of this alchemy they are on the cusp of, this space they are about to enter together, from which they cannot possibly emerge the same.

And then there is no more thinking, only knowing, only the fleeting landscape of touch and sight and sound that is theirs alone.

* * *

  
  


Later they lie on the mattress, her head on his chest and his arm wrapped around her. He feels an almost terrifying happiness, threatening to burst into laughter or tears. Her fingers are tracing swirls across his skin. 

“What are you thinking?” He asks.

“I’m thinking that I’ve never been so hungry,” she says with a giggle.

He looks at her and laughs.

“I don’t suppose you have a speck of food in this house?” She asks.

“Nope,” he grins.

“We humans do need food in order to survive, you know.”

“Worked up an appetite have you?” He says with a wicked smile.

“Yes,” she says, giving him a teasing bite on the shoulder.

“Come on, I know just the thing,” he tells her.

They pick up their discarded clothes, now adorned with streaks of dust, from the floor. They keep trading sly looks and grinning. His cheeks are sore from smiling but he can’t seem to stop.

They head out into the cool night, arm in arm, and walk a few blocks to a fish and chip shop. It’s a cloudless night, the stars brazenly bright. They sit on a bench, beneath the taciturn moon, the salty chips burning their still tingling lips.

She watches him, smiling, and he looks over at her.

“What?” He asks.

“I like watching you eat.”

He scoffs. “Too scrawny for you?”

“No,” she says, running a hand along his arm. “Something about you triggers some primal desire to feed you,” she says with a laugh.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to leave any desires unsatisfied,” he says, popping a chip in his mouth, his eyebrows raised suggestively. 

She laughs and rests her head against his shoulder. She wonders what she’ll feel next week, next month, next year, when she looks back on this night. She wonders who she’ll be by Monday morning.

When they get back to the house they are too exhausted to try to put together the bed. They dig through the boxes until they find sheets, pillows and blankets, and then cuddle up on the mattress on the floor. It feels a bit like summer camp and a bit like an illicit rendezvous, she feels very grown up and also very much like a mischievous teenager. 

They lie next to one another, heads bowed together, hands intertwined. They talk until they are too tired for words, their eyes heavy. She turns on her side and he curls up beside her. 

She’s asleep in minutes and he watches her awhile. It’s his first night here, their first night together, and he can’t help wondering if he’s filling the house with ghosts, if this will haunt him later. He tells himself whatever happens, it was worth it, this little island of happiness they’ve found.

He closes his eyes and drifts off into a thick, deep, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am ignoring one thing from Deguello here, which is Morse saying he will pick up Thursday in the morning at the end of the episode. I needed it to be Friday and for him to have the weekend off, so I'm just pretending that line didn't happen.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


	7. Prelude to a Parting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More fluff, more angst, and the boiler suit makes an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tacit fact is  
> the awful fear of losing  
> is not enough to cause  
> a fleeing love  
> to stay
> 
> -Maya Angelou, from Prelude to a Parting
> 
> Well, this is the last time I try to guess how many chapters a fic will be before completing it. We've gone from 4 to 8 chapters. I won't apologize for squeezing another one in here, because if I was really sorry I'd just finish the whole damn thing and wait to post until it was done. But I liked the stopping point here. There really (truly!) is only one final chapter after this one.
> 
> Thanks so much again to anyone still reading. It's so hard to judge something I've written myself and I worry that it's an eye rolling-ly saccharine romance saga, but hey, fanfiction is for self-indulgence, right?

_Saturday_

Joan wakes slowly, the vague feeling of unfamiliar surroundings tugging her mind toward consciousness. She opens her eyes to the room awash in amber sunlight, casting squares of gold glinting like stained glass on the peeling wallpaper. The autumn morning has brought a chill, the room is so cold she can see her breath in the air. She pulls the covers up beneath her chin and looks over at Morse. 

He’s burrowed beneath the blankets, still deep in sleep. She studies his sleeping figure as she might a work of art, the hand resting beneath his tousled hair, the dark lashes falling over the trail of freckles stretching from his cheeks across the bridge of his nose, the whisper of lines around the corners of his eyes, the bow of his lips beneath that tawny mustache, that little hollow beneath the curve of his bottom lip, the slight cleft of his chin. She knows that when he wakes and sees her he will smile, and the certainty of it makes her want to cry. 

She wishes she could put a map pin in this moment. She wants to remember it with such exactness that later she will be able to enter into it as easily as slipping into a pool, completely submerged in the memory of it. 

He stirs sleepily, rubs his eyes, and as he opens them and looks at her, a smile overtakes his face. 

“Hello,” he says. 

“Good morning,” she says, moving closer to kiss him lightly on the forehead.

“You missed,” he says, reaching to pull her against him. She giggles as he tugs the blankets up over their heads and kisses her. They are all mussed hair and sleep breath and cold noses and neither cares. 

Leaving the warmth of the bed and one another’s arms seems almost criminal, but eventually Joan insists that they should get some work done on the house. She wants to feel that she’s done something to help, that he will, in some small way, be better off by the time she leaves. 

Convincing Morse to leave their cozy little hideout is no easy feat, but she can hold her own when it comes to stubbornness. Besides, a shared shower is too enticing an offer for him to resist.

The tub is filthy, the water is freezing, he only has one towel, and Joan has forgotten her shampoo and has to use his. And she wouldn’t change any of it for anything. She loves knowing how he smells right after a shower, not to mention how he looks while in it, laughs watching him brush his teeth, clings to every revelation about this world of his that she’s wondered about for so long.

He can’t stop looking at her, can’t stop smiling, can’t resist touching her every chance he gets. If he could pick one morning to re-live for the rest of his life it would be this one. But isn’t the cruelty and consolation of life the insistence of a new day dawning? So he does his best to climb out of his head and stay rooted in this world she’s opened up between them, this space that only exists when they are together. He doesn’t want his twisting thoughts to wring this joy dry. There’ll be enough time for thinking later on, when the joy is gone, when she’s gone.

Joan hasn’t been raised by one of the most efficient women in Oxford for nothing. While Morse is still stumbling around in his pants and vest upstairs she’s already dressed and putting the kettle on. Again there is the problem of food, namely the complete lack of it, and she wonders, not for the first time, what the man subsists on. Luckily, she does find some tea bags in one of the kitchen boxes, but they’ll have to venture outside the house to get anything more.

She brings his tea upstairs and tells him she’s heading to the shop to get something to cook for breakfast. 

It’s ridiculous, but he hates for her to go, even on this short errand. The thought of her leaving, of her absence, makes his stomach clench.

“I’ll come along,” he says. “I should be the one paying.”

“There’s no need. I’m only picking up a few things. And anyway, you should finish unpacking the kitchen while I’m gone.” 

He wraps his arms around her waist and rests his forehead against hers. “Stay,” he says with a slow smile. “Let’s just go back to bed.”

She tries to ignore the look in his eyes, the rack of him asking her to stay. 

“I’ll be right back.”

She wraps her arms around his neck and holds him for just a moment too long, swallowing down the sharp tang this dress rehearsal of parting has left in her throat.

Then she kisses him, lightly, as if she thinks nothing of letting go, and steps away.

“I expect to see progress on that kitchen when I get back,” she says with a grin. And he smiles.

  
  
  


Joan walks the few blocks to the grocer she noticed when they walked past last night. The morning is bracingly cold and bright. She passes a young mother pushing a pram and a middle aged couple out raking leaves in their front garden. The skin above her lip is red from the prickling of Morse’s mustache, there’s doubtless more than one love bite on her neck, and her coat is still covered in dust. She must be quite a sight and the thought makes her grin wickedly. There’s something exhilarating about being out in the world carrying this delicious secret.

She buys only enough for breakfast, knowing they’ll need to come back later to stock his cupboards and fridge. She hopes he at least has a toaster, frying pan, and enough plates and utensils for two, though it’s far from guaranteed.

She returns with two bags of groceries to find Morse scrubbing the kitchen counters. He’s dressed in a brown boiler suit, unbuttoned partway down his chest, vest peeking out underneath. But his clothes aren’t the only change. His face is clean shaven above his sheepish grin.

“You’ve certainly been busy!”

“Felt it was getting in the way,” he says, a bit of blush creeping into his cheeks. “Will you miss it?”

She sets the bags down on the floor, forgotten. “I suppose we’ll have to see.”

She walks over and glides her fingers along the smooth, bare skin above his lips, the spicy scent of shaving cream still clinging to him. “Don’t think I don’t know that you did this on purpose,” she says, shaking her head and laughing.

“We’re still going to get some things done around here.” She undoes the last few buttons on the suit and slips her hand inside to slide down the length of him, her lips trailing along his neck and collarbone, then reaches her other hand to cradle the side of his face, her fingers grasping his hair, pulling him into a soft, hungry kiss. “Later.”

And they do, eventually. She cooks breakfast, though it’s well past lunchtime, while he tackles some repairs. And then they move from room to room, cleaning and unpacking. 

She guesses that if she weren’t here he would almost certainly have music playing, and thinks of asking him to put a record on. But something stops her. It isn’t just that her musical tastes don’t run toward opera. He’s such a private person, and while she’s enthralled with this glimpse into his everyday life, it is only a glimpse. Maybe there are doors that shouldn’t be opened when she’ll be closing them so soon, things he deserves to keep to himself. There’s so much about him that she knows now, and more still that she’ll never have the chance to learn. She leaves the records in their box, lets them keep their secrets, and tries to keep herself from wanting more. 

The Morse she’s seen today is so different from what she’s used to, so unguarded and playful. She couldn’t have known yesterday how it would feel to give him this happiness. She doesn’t want to know how it will feel to take it away.

Morse had felt a momentary hesitation about her helping unpack, going through his things. It’s the type of interaction that with anyone else would practically make his skin crawl, a mortifying intrusion. But he finds with her he doesn’t mind. He doubts he’d mind much of anything, with her here.

He offers to take her out to dinner, but is glad when she suggests they cook something instead. He loves having her here all to himself. 

Once all the rooms are passably clean and the boxes are unpacked, they return to the kitchen. 

“Seriously, what is it you usually eat?” She asks.

He shrugs. “Bachelor fare I suppose. Something from a tin or toast. Not much of a cook.”

“I can see that,” she says teasingly.

Joan takes stock and makes a list of necessary supplies. Morse’s entire repertoire of cooking utensils includes a kettle, pot, pan, tin opener and toaster. 

They head to the shops and come home with more groceries than he’s ever had before, along with a few new kitchen tools.

He opens a bottle of wine, a corkscrew being one tool he’s never without, and they start on cooking dinner. She’s chosen spaghetti, saying it’s simple enough a child can make it, and then laughing at his reaction. 

“You should really be cooking for me,” she says, pushing herself up to sit on the kitchen counter and taking a sip of wine. “I’ll oversee things from here,” she says with a grin.

Though Joan doesn’t want the focus of her life to be cooking and cleaning, that doesn’t change the fact that she’s extremely capable at both. Sam’s the same way, mum saw to that. 

From her perch on the counter she instructs Morse on how to properly salt the boiling water. He carefully puts the pasta in, looking over his shoulder at her to make sure he’s done it right. She giggles. He comes over to stand in front of her, leaning against the counter.

“Be honest,” he says. “How am I doing so far?”

“Full marks for effort,” she says, wrapping her legs around him. He puts his hands on her waist, grinning.

She runs her hands along the strong line of his jaw, enjoying looking straight into those impossibly blue eyes, and leans in to kiss him. She threads her fingers together around the back of his neck and nuzzles his head to one side to whisper in his ear.

“You’d better keep an eye on that pasta.”

He groans and kisses her again, then slowly slides his hands from her waist down the length of her thighs, as though he can hardly bear to let her go.

She applauds as he drains the spaghetti into his brand new colander. They stick with jarred marinara sauce on this voyage cooking attempt. Still, he does feel a bashful pride in having cooked her a meal, even if she was the one telling him how to do it, and it did only consist of boiling pasta.

They sit together, eating and talking, and finish off the first bottle of wine, followed by another.

If they hadn’t put the bed frame together earlier in the day, they’d be on the floor again tonight. Neither is in the mood to do anything now apart from putting the bed to good use.

Afterwards they lay with their bodies intertwined, as if closeness can ward off anything that might pull them apart.

Joan thinks that today has been a bit like playing house, and hates for the game to end. But this taste of domestic intimacy she reveled in all day has turned bittersweet with nightfall. Because it was, after all, only pretending. 

It would be the easiest thing in the world to stay. And if things could stay just as they are now, how could she go? But even if they went to the registry office tomorrow and she stayed right here as his wife, it would all change. There would be work and family and the million drudgeries and difficulties of life pressing in on them.

What they’ve started isn’t ending because she’s going. It’s ending because it couldn’t last, even if she stayed.

How quickly she slipped into the role of caretaker and house manager today. Even if Morse didn’t want her to give up her career, to see to his meals and housekeeping, mightn’t she feel guilty if she didn’t? Wives didn’t let their husbands come home to an empty house and go to bed hungry, not without feeling the sting of a job poorly done. There’s a reason the women she knows with careers, Viv and Miss Frazil and the like, aren’t married. Husbands require care, and Morse, she guesses, would require even more than most. And she does want to care for him. But she also wants so much more.

Come Monday morning he’d be back to work. And soon enough would come the late nights and weekend phone calls, the sacrifices they would both have to make for the job. How could she not resent it, him needing to put work first, if their being together meant putting her own ambitions on hold? Those nights alone and waiting, how could she not spend them thinking of what she’d given up, of the life that might have been? 

It’s no way to start a life together, with the scales already tipped so far that they’d never find balance. She can’t escape the feeling that if she stays they’d both live to regret it, that this happiness would crumble around them bit by bit. But the thought of leaving him now, when she’s so in love that his touch feels as necessary as oxygen, fills her with an ache so heavy she can hardly breathe. 

It’s all so much better and so much worse than she could have imagined. But even now, she wouldn’t go back to a time before he’d touched her, she wouldn’t trade this sharp edged bliss for ignorance.

Morse thinks how different all of this would have been without her here, how different it will all be when she’s gone. He wishes he could feel this way forever, like nothing else matters, like his heart is finally whole. Knowing that he can be this person, that he can make her happy this way, makes him feel that life could finally be the way he’s always wanted. If only she would stay. Doesn’t she feel what he feels? And if she does, how can she want it to end?

The thought of her leaving is so painful he can hardly stand to hold it in his head. He runs his mind over the blade of it, trying to test his resolve. 

He dreads the time after she’s gone, but more than that he dreads the moments just before she goes. He’s afraid he’ll ruin what they’ve had, that these golden hours will be tarnished by his disappointment and desperation. He’s afraid he won’t know how to say goodbye. 

  
  


Joan wakes to the room dark and still, an empty space beside her in bed. She turns over and sees Morse standing at the window, lost in thought, staring out into the night.

“There you are,” she says.

He turns to look over towards the bed. “Did I wake you?”

“Not you, your absence,” she says, slipping out of bed, her feet cold against the bare floorboards, coming to stand beside him. “I missed you.”

She reaches her arm around his waist and lays her head against his chest. “Couldn’t sleep?” She asks.

“No,” he says, shaking his head and pulling her close.

“Just look at that moon,” she says.

But why would he, when she’s beside him? Her skin is more lucent than any moon, her eyes hold all the light he’d ever need.

“Mmmm. Beautiful” He says, kissing the top of her head and nestling his face in the curve of her neck.

“Come back to bed,” she says, pressing her fingertips against his and weaving their hands together. 

They lie in bed, a soft tangle of limbs, faces so close they’re almost touching. Even in the dark, she can see tears pooling in his eyes. She puts her hand against his cheek, runs her fingers along his jaw, rubs her thumb gently against the indent in his chin.

He presses his lips to her palm.

“Can we talk about it?” She asks quietly.

“What is there to say?” He asks.

She takes a deep breath. Both needing and dreading to put words to what hangs between them now. 

“I hate the thought of an hour without you. Not seeing you for a year...” Her voice breaks, the words like barbs in her mouth. “I can’t imagine what it will be like, when I do see you again. If I can’t kiss you, can’t even touch you.” 

“What will we be?” He asks quietly, his voice emotionless, eyes swimming. “Friends?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “What were we before?”

“Not this,” he says.

“No.” She smiles, her pillow wet with tears.

“I don’t know what it will be like,” she says. “I don’t know what we’ll be. We can’t just put our lives on hold. But whatever happens, whatever we do or don’t say, I know what I’ll be thinking.”

She looks into his eyes. “I’ll be remembering this, you beside me... your kiss... your touch... where every freckle is beneath your shirt,” she runs her fingers along his shoulders, tracing the lines she never wants to, never could forget. “I’ll remember every moment of this.”

He slides closer to her, his fingers slipping through her hair, his lips finding hers in the darkness. He kisses her like he’s drowning and she’s the last breath of air, holds her like she’s the only thing keeping him afloat. 

He tries to forget everything but this, now. Tries to forget how soon she’ll be his in memory alone. 

And she clings to him, and tries to fit enough love for a lifetime in the little time they have left. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more to go and we're done, I swear! 
> 
> If you'd like to read more about Morse as a cook, and you haven't already checked out the fic Home Comforts by LadyAJ_13, you should go read it right now. It's an absolute delight!


	8. What We Carry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally reach the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart  
> i carry your heart  
> (i carry it in my heart)"  
> -e.e. cummings
> 
> Here we are at the end. This is by far the longest fic I've ever written and certainly the one so far that I've found most difficult and rewarding to write. I really can't say enough how much I appreciate anyone who has followed along :)

Joan wakes to a grey Sunday morning, all yesterday’s dazzle dimmed. She can feel Monday at the edge of the room, waiting. She looks over at Morse, still asleep with his face turned away from her. Those freckle flecked shoulders, the way the hair at the nape of his neck curls up stubbornly, even his hand on the mattress beside her is unspeakably tender, his every feature a beckoning siren’s song, calling to her with a melody she knows by heart. She tries not to think of tomorrow morning, of all the other mornings to come. But looking at Morse, she can’t help longing for this moment while she’s still in it, feeling her future self reach out for him while he lies beside her now. 

Should she watch him sleeping or wake him? Suddenly there is so little time and so much she still wants. She can feel the minutes slipping through her fingers. Though this is what she’ll miss tomorrow, she can’t enjoy it, it’s all too much, sorrow suffocates the sweetness. She quietly gets out of bed, grabbing one of his button up shirts from the closet and slipping it on. 

The stairs creak beneath her as she makes her way to the kitchen and puts the kettle on. Morse sleeps like the dead, there’s yet to be a morning he’s woken before her. She knows he’ll sleep until she wakes him, knows he’ll coax her back into bed and wrap her in his arms, knows this is the last morning they’ll spend together.

She stands at the kitchen window looking out at the misty morning, steam rising from the mug in her hands. Fog hangs like a curtain over the trees and houses, as if the outside world no longer exists, as if anything might be up ahead. 

She needs to pull herself together. They can’t spend their last day mooning about like morose, lovesick teenagers. And Morse certainly isn’t likely to be the one to lighten the mood. She refuses to spend the day mourning the end before it even arrives. That’s what she tells herself anyway, ignoring the lump in her throat and hollowness in her stomach.

She pours a cup for Morse and makes her way back upstairs. He’s still asleep, splayed out across the bed, taking up well more than his half, as she’s become accustomed to. She sits beside him and sets the tea down on the nightstand next to his alarm clock. She leans over to kiss the freckled shoulder that’s peeking out from the mess of blankets twisted around him. He sighs and blinks open his eyes, hugging the blankets tighter around himself like a cocoon and giving her a sleepy grin.

“Come back to bed,” he says, slowly scooching himself over to make room for her and lifting the blankets up.

She climbs in, the bed still warm from the imprint of his body. She wraps her arms around him, nestling her face against his chest, folding herself against him like a shield. Right now there’s no such thing as close enough. She wishes a few of his freckles would rub off onto her skin, some part of him she could carry with her, an indelible mark to prove she’s been changed by this. Or maybe she just wants some part of him she can still touch, when all of this is gone.

When she holds him like this he can almost believe that she needs him the way he needs her, that he’s enough for her, that she won’t want to let go. She could stay. He could fall asleep beside her every night and wake next to her each morning. On those sleepless nights when the wolves circle and memories howl, she could hold him in her arms. He could finally belong somewhere, with someone. But he isn’t what she wants. She isn’t his to keep. She never was. This is as close as he gets.

There will be no work on the house today. The world has shrunk to the edges of the bed. They do venture down to the kitchen for a late breakfast, and only then because Joan insists, knowing it will probably be his last for a long while. Afterwards, with unspoken understanding, they make their way back upstairs.

Joan sits at the head of the bed, her back against the wall. Morse stands in the doorway a moment, looking suddenly lost and unsure.

“Come here,” she says softly.

He climbs onto the bed and lays his head down in her lap, his body stretched out across the mattress. She runs her hands through his hair, rubbing the ochre strands between her fingers. 

He thinks that he will never feel this way again. There will be other women, other loves maybe, but never like this. This is an intimacy he’s never known before, being effortlessly himself with someone. No one else has ever looked at him the way she does, the way she always has, as though she really sees him. 

They are quiet a long time. There are things that only silence can hold, that only touch translates. They are so used to these wordless conversations, even now.

He can tell she’s going to speak before she says a word. Today there is a balancing act to their talking, both of them walking the tightrope of what is and isn’t said.

“This doesn’t have to be a secret, you know,” she says. “You can tell whoever you’d like... even dad, if you want.”

He looks up at her and gives a little half grin, then shakes his head. He sits up beside her, their shoulders touching, pulled together like magnets.

“I just don’t want you to feel like I’m swearing you to secrecy or anything,” she says, running her fingers along his open palm, wishing she could read the lines and know if their lives intersect again in some future.

“Will you tell anyone?” He asks, looking over at her.

“I don’t think so.”

“Embarrassed of me?”

The insecurity might be wrapped in a joke, but it stings her all the same.

“Why do you do that?” She asks pointedly. “Assume people think the worst of you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he sighs. “I suppose because they usually do.”

“You spend your life looking for the truth of people, but I don’t think you can see it in yourself. I wish you could see what other people do, see what they love about you.”

“And what is it you see?”

“Now you’re just fishing!” She says with a smile. 

He looks at her with those oracle eyes, and she can see that he needs her to say it. He really doesn’t know. She wonders when he last heard someone say they loved him.

“No one loves you for your mind, though we all know you’re smart,” she says, bending towards him teasingly.

He grins. “Yes, so I remember. Must be my social graces that endear me to you then.”

She laughs, then looks straight into his eyes.

“They love you for your heart, Morse. You’re a good man and that's a rare thing. You are loved, by more than just me.”

He swallows, looks down, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

“I don’t think I’ll tell anyone because they’d think it was just some fling,” she says. “I couldn’t explain what it’s meant...what you mean to me. It would cheapen it somehow, to share it with anyone else.”

“Do you think you’ll tell anyone?” She asks, her curiosity genuine.

“No one to tell,” he says with a shake of his head. “Never seem to have the words for the things that matter anyway.”

“That’s what your poets are for, then.” She nods to one of the boxes of books on the floor that they never got around to unpacking.

He gets a wistful, far away look.

“ _He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?_ _He would not stay for me to stand and gaze._ _I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,_ _and went with half my life about my ways_ ,” he quotes softly. 

Then he shakes his head and gives a whisper of a laugh, embarrassment prickling through him, turning away from her gaze and looking down towards their hands, as he clasps hers tighter.

“Look at me, Morse,” her voice is almost stern in her refusal to let it waver. He looks at her, eyes brimming.

“I’m not leaving because of you, you know that right? I’m leaving because of me.”

He nods slowly. 

“I’ll miss you,” he says quietly. “I’ll miss this.”

“Me too.” She can’t say more, because there is too much to say.

She turns towards him then and puts her arms around his neck, wrapping her legs around him to straddle his waist. Her hands find their familiar hold on his jawline, thumbs running down the auburn hair at his temples and roaming across his cheekbones. She looks into the shifting blue of his eyes, more reckless and churning than any sea. She could never tire of this view, of this slide of her hands from his face down to his chest. Her fingers caress the cartography of this country she yearned to explore for so long. Unable to resist, she darts her fingers over to tickle underneath his arm. He ducks away from her, laughing, and tickles her side. She shrieks, and files this knowledge away with all the rest she’s stockpiled like gold: Morse is ticklish.

And then they are all quiet stillness again, the air heavy between them. She slowly kisses each of his fingertips, then slides her fingers between his and presses his hands up against the wall. His breath hitches, his body shuddering a little beneath her. His eyes are all want, never leaving hers. There is a vulnerability about him, the way his face embodies his every emotion, desire for her stamped across his features so blatantly it makes her blush. She loves watching him this way, with cheeks flushed and lips parted, as if he’s composed entirely of his longing for her.

And, of course, he is. He’s slipped from the confines of his mind to this plane devoid of everything but pleasure and need. Even the most thorough drunkenness can’t shut off his thoughts like this can. He only exists for this, for her, everything else is light-years away, distant and forgotten.

The hours slip by. They talk, but not about tomorrow. Joan knows she will have to say something soon. They should both be clear about what lies ahead. But she hates to summon the end out loud, afraid that once she does she’ll break the spell and all of this will crumble to dust. Here she is again, on familiar ground, trying to make her way to him through a minefield of words. 

He knows he should ask about what’s coming. He doesn’t even know what time her train leaves. He should be ready this time. Maybe if he’s ready, things will be different. Maybe he won’t just watch her go, everything he should have said swallowed up by silence. Maybe if he’s ready it won’t hurt so much. Maybe if he’s ready he can find the words to make her want to stay.

When dusk begins to dim the room, Joan suggests that they should make something for dinner.

Grateful for the distraction, Morse grins, his eyes bright. “I’ll cook.”

“What exactly will you cook?” She asks, with a wary look and a smile.

“My speciality.”

“I’m not having whisky for dinner, Morse.”

He gives an exaggerated scowl and she giggles.

“Oh ye of little faith. Wait here. I’ll bring it up and we can eat in bed.”

She’s far from convinced, afraid he’ll either bring up something that barely counts as food or burn the house down, but she doesn’t move from her seat on the bed. He gives a last look over his shoulder, grinning, and goes downstairs.

She can’t stop smiling, hearing him banging about in the kitchen and picturing his enthusiasm pitted against his utter lack of cooking skills. Sometimes she loves him so much it hurts.

Shadows smudge the corners of the room and she switches on the lamp. She looks around at this space that has become so sacred, the clothes scattered on the floor, the still unmade bed and rickety chair. Part of her is envious of him, that he will get to stay here where they have been so happy, while she’ll have so little to hold on to. Will she ever step foot in this house again? Even this distance of separate rooms, of minutes, makes her want to run downstairs and wrap her arms around him. 

In a few minutes Morse returns, arms full balancing two plates and a bottle of wine. He hands her a plate and she gives a contented laugh. Toasted cheese, a favourite from her childhood, and made passably well. 

“I’m impressed,” she says.

“Strange insisted on teaching me to make it when we were living together. Got tired of cooking for us every night and said I needed to learn to pull my weight,” he scoffs.

They drink the wine straight from the bottle. Joan’s glad to be a little tipsy, for everything to feel a little less real, to forget a little.

They finish their sandwiches and she licks her fingers appreciatively. He grabs her and pulls her into a kiss, warm and soft and just a little sloppy. 

Something like regret clutches at her chest, that this isn’t enough for her, that she isn’t someone who can stay. She remembers the lightness in Claudine’s voice when she’d called from the airport to say goodbye. Though Joan can’t stay, neither does she know how to go. She wonders how anyone could leave him and not be torn in two. Still, it’s time.

“I should probably pack my things. Train leaves at 6:30 tomorrow. Won’t be much time to get ready in the morning.”

He just nods, looking away.

She would like to touch him, to hold him, but she doesn’t. What he wants from her now is what she can’t give. 

This is the beginning of the end. They both feel it. He sits on the bed watching Joan gather the clothes strewn about the room, packing up her toiletries and laying her clothes for the morning on the back of a chair.

“Can I take one of your shirts?” She asks.

“Yes.”

“Should I leave something of mine? Not sure my dresses would fit you.”

“Hmmmm.”

“I know,” she says, rifling about in her suitcase and pulling out a silk button up blouse. She takes it to the bed and slips it around his pillow. 

“Just as cuddly as I am and it won’t boss you about or nag you to eat.”

He tries to smile, he really does. 

She knows that look in his eyes, hears the way his sentences have eroded to single words. There is more that she should say, more that they should set in stone, but she’s afraid they’d sink beneath the weight of it.

She walks over to where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed and wraps her arms around him. He leans his head against her stomach, his face buried in the open folds of the half buttoned shirt of his she’s wearing. He would like to find comfort in the scent of her, in the softness of her skin against his forehead, in the feel of her fingers raking gently through his hair, but it is so hard not to cry, not to ask her to stay.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she says. “I want to be out in the world with you.”

They dress, though the day is done, and step out into the night.

They walk along the pavement, hands clasped, Joan leaning against him. Everything is still theirs. The moon and stars and all the dark unknowable space between, the swaying treetops, the night’s hum and silence, all of it brushed with an ephemeral lustre, serenading them with the ardor of a final curtain call.

She looks up at the sky. “We’ll both still be under that same moon tomorrow night.”

But he knows nothing, not even the moon, will ever be the same again. He might walk these same streets, but everything will be different, altered irrevocably by her absence. Nothing will ever again be this.

When they arrive back at the house he doesn’t even turn on the lights. They both know their way well enough by now, and there is comfort in the darkness. In the bedroom they undress without hurry or reserve, the curves and lines of one another’s bodies as familiar and beloved as a home country.

Both of them know this is the last time. Never have they wanted one another more. The boundaries blur between one body and another, between pain and pleasure, between heartache and love, between holding on and letting go. It’s everything they’ve ever felt and never said. It’s everything they’ve ever been and will never be. It’s almost enough. Nearly.

Afterwards they lie looking at the ceiling, thinking of what’s to come, and the finality of it is so terrible Morse almost wishes it were morning, that it was all already over with.

Everything Joan wanted feels very far away, and he is right here beside her. She turns to look at him.

“Hold me,” she whispers.

And he does, pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her, holding her pressed against him until he falls asleep.

For Joan sleep remains just out of reach. She’s sick with indecision. The question isn’t whether or not she’ll leave, but how she should go. All the finite details of departure that she’s kept out of sight all day are swirling in her head. What time will she need to get up and get ready? Should she set the alarm? Will he drive her to the station or should she take a cab? When should she wake him? She knows all of this should have already been discussed and decided. 

The truth is she doesn’t know how to leave him. What will hurt him the least? She thinks back to another early morning, another train. The way he said _stay_. The tears in his eyes. Will they re-enact the ache tomorrow? Will she be able to bear it?

Maybe a note would be a mercy. If she leaves without waking him, he can’t ask her to stay. If she leaves without waking him, she won’t have to see his face when she goes. 

If she leaves without waking him, it’s already over, she’s already kissed him for the last time.

When dawn begins to overtake the darkness, Joan allows herself one last look at him sleeping. She’s crying already. But she makes herself slip quietly out of bed. She doesn’t let herself look back towards the bed as she dresses and brushes her teeth, as she packs up the last of her things and carries her suitcases downstairs. There is too much danger in looking at him now.

She goes to the kitchen and sets out two slices of bread. She gets a jar down from the cupboard and the cheddar from the refrigerator. There’s no wax paper, but she wraps the sandwich carefully in the cling film they bought and places it on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Monday. Cheese and pickle. 

Is this kindness a cruelty? She doesn’t know anymore. He won’t eat it for lunch, of course, but maybe it will mean he’ll actually eat something for dinner. Maybe it will tell him a little of what she’s unable to put into words. 

She searches in his jacket pockets for his notebook and pen. She tears out a sheet and writes a note. It doesn’t take long. She’s spent all night agonizing over and then settling on these few inadequate words. 

_What we’ve had is ours forever. Never have I loved you more. Never will I love you less. You have my heart, always._

_Joan_

She folds the note in half, writes his name across the front and sets it atop the record player.

She looks at her watch. It’s time. 

She walks up the stairs. She doesn’t want him to feel rushed, but doesn’t want to leave time to crawl back into bed, back into his arms. She knows herself too well to allow that temptation. 

She sits beside him on the bed, kisses his cheek, runs her fingers through his hair.

There is an awful moment when his eyes are warm and hopeful with happiness, and then realization dawns. He doesn’t reach out for her. She doesn’t know what to say.

“I should go in twenty minutes or so. I could call a cab?”

“No. I’ll drive you.”

She nods. Everything in her is crying out to touch him. The air is tight with restraint. 

“Do you want me to wait downstairs?” She asks, unsure of what they are now, of what she’s meant to do.

“No. Of course not.”

He doesn’t look at her though. He gets out of bed, his body just barely brushing hers in passing. She sits on the bed as he dresses, feeling like she’s intruding on something intimate that she’s no longer entitled to.

When he’s ready he looks over at her with jaw clenched and lips pursed and she follows him down the stairs. Her suitcases are already by the front door and she catches the wound in his eyes when he sees them.

Maybe she should have done things differently. Or maybe there was never going to be a right way. Maybe it was always going to end like this.

She knows his cold indifference is a defense, and half expected it, but it hurts all the same.

He knows he will hate himself for this later. He already does, but he can’t seem to stop. He doesn’t know what else to do, he doesn’t know how to be with her now that they are so close to the end.

Her jacket is slung over one of the suitcases and she picks it up. She is trying not to look at him, trying not to think of never seeing the kitchen again, the bedroom, the bed. She is trying so hard to hold it together until she steps onto that train, just until she’s out of sight.

He walks up to her and holds out his hand. She hands him the jacket and turns, sliding her arm into the sleeve. She feels as though everything is happening in reverse, time scrolling backwards, undoing everything that’s happened between them. The momentary touch of his hand on her skin as he slides the jacket onto her shoulders brings tears to her eyes.

“Ready?” He asks curtly.

She has never been less ready for anything in her life. She nods.

He picks up the suitcases and she follows him out to the car. The sky is grey with clouds. He opens the door for her, avoiding her eyes. 

They drive to the station. Rain begins a steady patter on the windscreen. All weekend time has been a gift, something to be cherished. Now the minutes seem to expand ever outward in front of them, purgatory in motion. 

Finally Morse parks the car and opens her door. He gets the suitcases out from the back and sets them on the pavement. He steels himself and looks over at her.

Joan’s looking at the ground, rain dripping from her hair and down her face. She feels his eyes on her and raises her glance to meet them. 

Something in her expression, the softness of her features, the anguish in her eyes, pulls him towards her, powerless to stop himself. 

He can’t help it, he reaches out and puts a hand to her cheek. She looks at him with tears spilling over and rests her hand over his. 

And then they are wrapped in one another’s arms, a messy, frantic jumble of kisses and tears and apologies. The ground beneath them vibrates with the sound of the approaching train.

She takes his face in her hands, one last time. She looks into his eyes. 

“Maybe we’ll still have that coffee someday?”

He nods, tears and rain running down his cheeks.

He pulls her into his arms, holding tight to the dream he’s carried for so long, to everything she is, everything she could have been, everything she will forever be.

And then he lets her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels very strange to be done with this, because I've been working on it since March, right before some ummm worldwide chaos started, and sometimes it has been such a struggle and other times such a welcome distraction from real life. Also, I had a different ending envisioned and all written out pretty much from the start, and then this one just unexpectedly happened instead. I hope it rings true, it just felt right.
> 
> I'm so very grateful to anyone who has read along or left kudos or comments. I appreciate the encouragement so very VERY much.
> 
> The poem is Housman, of course ;)


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